Brecht
Brecht
Brecht
BERTOLT BRECHT'S
GREAT PLAYS
ALFRED D. WHITE
© Alfred D. White 1978
Softcover reprint of the hardcover Ist edition 1978 978-0-333-21655-2
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without permission
White, Alfred D.
Bertolt Brecht's great plays
1. Brecht, Bertolt - Criticisms and interpretation
I. Title
832' .9'12 PTZ603.R397Z/
ISBN 978-1-349-03280-8 ISBN 978-1-349-03278-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-03278-5
Acknowledgements X
Preface xi
1 Life of Brecht 1
8 Assessment 171
Notes 175
Indexes 189
List of Plates
1 Life of Galileo, scene 2: the Doge tries to attract Galileo's atten-
tion (Berliner Ensemble 1957)
2 Life of Galileo, scene 12: Laughton with projection of instruments
of torture (New York 1947)
3 Mother Courage, scene 6: Courage counts stock and curses war
(Berliner Ensemble 1951)
4 Mother Courage, scene 11: death of Kattrin (Wuppertal)
5 The Good Person of Szechwan, street set (Frankfurt 1952)
6a The Good Person of Szechwan, scene 7: Shen Teh addresses the
public (Berliner Ensemble 1957)
6b The Good Person of Szechwan, scene 8: Shui Ta supervises the
tobacco factory (Zurich 1943)
7a The Caucasian Chalk Circle, act 2: Grusha rescues Michael (Ber-
liner Ensemble 1954)
7b The Caucasian Chalk Circle, act 3: the bridge (Berliner Ensemble
1954)
8 The Caucasian Chalk Circle, act 6: Grusha argues with the Gov-
ernor's Wife (Berliner Ensemble 1954)
Grateful thanks are due to Gerda Goedhart for permission to reproduce Plates 7a
and 7b. The author and publishers have been unable to trace the copyright holders
of the remaining Plates, but we will be pleased to make the necessary arrange-
ments at the first opportunity.
Acknowledgements
The author and publishers wish to thank the following who have kindly
given permission for the use of copyright material:
Eyre Methuen Limited, for extracts from 'Brecht on Theatre' by John
Willet, and short quotations from the works of Bertolt Brecht: 'The Life
of Galileo', translated by Desmond Vesey, translation copyright @1960 by
Desmond Vesey; 'Mother Courage', translated by Eric Bentley, copyright
© 1955, 1959, 1961, 1962 by Eric Bentley (original work published under
the title of 'Mutter Courage Und Ihre Kinder', copyright© 1949 by Suhr-
kamp Verlag vormals S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main); 'The Caucasian
Chalk Circle', translated by James and Tania Stern with W. H. Auden,
copyright© (Act 5) 1946 and 1960 by]. and T. Stern and W. H. Auden
{original work published under the title of 'Der Kaukasische Kreidekreis',
copyright © 1954 by Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin)
Eyre Methuen Limited and Hope Leresche & Sayle, on behalf of John
Willet, for an extract from 'The Good Person of Szechwan', translated by
John Willet, copyright © 1962 by John Willet {original work published
under the title of 'Der Gute Mensche von Sezuan', copyright 1955 by
Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin)
Suhrkamp Verlag, for extracts from 'Arbeitsjournal', copyright © 1973
by Stefan S. Brecht. All rights reserved by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am
Main.
Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders, but if any
have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make
the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.
Preface
This short book is about a closely interconnected group of Brecht's
plays in which the elements of his greatness appear in their most con-
centrated and complex form, and by which his stature can be measured.
It is not concerned with his development before these plays were written
nor with his verse, narrative, dialogue and theoretical work or with his
other plays except in their relevance to the four plays in hand. This in-
volves no denial of the greatness of much of his other work. Despite
limations of scope and length, I hope this book will however suggest
what made the dramatist Brecht write as he did, how one may approach
his texts and what is to be borne in mind when a production of them
is envisaged. The plot of each play is summarised - not just to help those
who have not yet read or seen the plays, but because absolute clarity of
the story-line is a primary consideration for Brecht. Then an attempt is
made to characterise each play and explore some of its salient features.
My thanks are due particularly to Mr D. Richards for help and advice,
to students of University College, Cardiff, with whom I have discussed
many of the ideas in this book, and to my wife for acting as partner in
many mealtime thinking-aloud sessions and for reading the typescript
and preparing the index.
A.D.W.
July 1977
1 Life of Brecht
Eugen Berthold Brecht was born in Augsburg on 10 February 1898, of
middle-class background. His father, a Catholic, rose during the first
twenty years of this century from a subordinate secretarial position to the
directorship of a paper-mill, and appears- though tolerant of his son's
work- to have been a typical ambitious, nationalistic bourgeois of the
time. Brecht's mother, a Protestant, who died in 1920 after long suffer-
ing from cancer, lived in his memory rather as the passive, tolerant,
rural element. She was the bookish one of his parents, the odd one out
of the family. He seems to have been an arrogant child (though not an
only child), joined in games only when he could be the leader, and was
excused exercise at the grammar-school he attended because of a weak
heart. He had a good grounding in literature and in (Protestant) religious
knowledge. With a group of classmates he spent much time mounting
productions in a puppet theatre. In 1914 he published in the schoolboys'
journal Die Ernte his first drama Die Bibel ('The Bible'), already note-
worthy for its unimpressed attitude to heroism and to the putting of
beliefs above people. In 1914- unsurprisingly, in view of the atmosphere
in Germany at the time- he was affected by patriotic frenzy, but his
general attitude was rebellious, as seen in a speech on German Dynasties
which gained him the lowest possible mark, and an essay of 1916 with
a pacifist theme. He read voraciously- from Shakespeare to Verlaine and
trashy novelettes - and gathered around him a group of literary young
men, of whom Caspar Neher was to remain closely associated with him
all his life: Brecht was intense and faithful in his friendships, though
already prone to let personal rancour rule his dealings with people whose
views he disliked. They shocked the town with torchlight processions,
spent nights out in the meadows, swam, lazed, climbed trees and read
their works to each other. Their leader found it wiser to write about
swimming and climbing trees than to join in. He took up the forename
Bert instead of the Eugen hitherto used, and dressed sloppily as a mark
of revolt against bourgeois standards. His mother sighed in vain over his
foul language and the erotic entanglements which started, by his own
account, when he was 17. After Rose Maria Aman, Paula Banholzer
occupied his attention. His attitude to sex was un-bourgeois, lacking in
2 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
the refinements and neuroses typical of our century, 1 but full of natural
zest - and natural egotism. For all his sensitivity towards women, he was
obsessed with keeping his independence: he tried to avoid marriage pro-
posals, pregnancies, and distractions from his literary work, whose
material was his various passions: the contemplation of transience;
friendship; sex; the fascination of the fairground with its swingboats
and peep-shows; water, trees and clouds.
As a student in Munich, from October 1917 on, he registered as a
student of medicine, attended scientific and literary lectures and fre-
quented the theatre. He just had time to study the dramatist and balla-
deer Frank Wedekind in person before his sudden death. When the call-
up -long delayed because of his weak heart- finally threatened Brecht,
he qualified as a medical student for the ambulance service and was able
to avoid the front line. In October he duly became a medical orderly in a
hospital for the war-wounded in Augsburg. What he saw here marked
him for life, though he was assigned to the venereal disease section. He
wrote his first famous poem Legende vom toten Soldaten ('Legend of the
Dead Soldier') - whose catchy presentation of the grotesque excesses
of German militarism (the dead soldier is exhumed and declared fit for
active service) was later to earn him a high place on the Nazi blacklist.
That he sang it to the wounded, and that he was a soldiers' representative
in the short-lived Bavarian Republic after the war, however. may well be
inventions. The complex revolutionary movements of 1918-19 in Bavaria
interested him as instructive adventures, rather than serious politics. He
had left-wing sympathies and was friendly with leading revolutionaries
in Augsburg; but, as yet, violence in revolutions seemed to him as sense-
less as the violence of the imperialist war. He was more interested in
earning money by writing so as to avoid returning to University; he made
contact with Lion Feuchtwanger, the novelist, then dramaturg (literary
adviser, editor and adaptor) of a Munich theatre, who was however just
as prone to exploit Brecht for his own ends as to help him. Brecht was
now prolifically writing poems as a private amusement (some of the more
printable verse of this period appeared as Hauspostille, 'Manual of Piety'.
in 1927), stories and film treatments to make money, and also- with
rather more difficulty- plays. Baal (written 1918. successive versions up
to 1955: all Brecht's plays went through a bewildering series of recast-
ings, restylings. rewritings, alterations to suit particular theatres or
actors- nothing was ever finished) gives- in reaction to the would-be
spirituality of the then fashionable epigones of literary expressionism
and in line with Wedekind's principles- a new earthiness to the theme
of the asocial vagrant poet and lover, which had long been a rather pale
poetic convention. Trommeln in der Nacht ('Drums in the Night', written
1919 and continually altered until its premiere, Brecht's stage debut, in
1922) has its setting in the Spartacist risings of the time, but the typic-
Life of Brecht 3
ally proletarian protagonist turns his back on ideals and violence and
goes home to his non-virgin bride. Some one-act plays of 1919, notably
Die Kleinburgerhochzeit ('The Petty Bourgeois' Wedding') show the in-
fluence of Karl Valentin, a noted Munich comedian whose sympathetic
yet sharp approach to human stupidity impressed him greatly and whose
friend he became.
Germany in the twenties. the Weimar Republic, never really emerged
from the slaughter of World War I which preceded it before entering the
violence which portended its close and the horrors of Nazism. Brecht re-
flects an age which sees life as brutish and basic, people as self-centred
and violent, even nature as uncaring rather than maternal. Even the
pacifism of the age is aggressive; having seen the hospitals of 1914-18,
Brecht was eventually to be willing to espouse a cause which promises
universal brotherhood, to embrace violence in the interests of ending
violence. Willett (pp. 66-74, 88f.) has shown how typical a child of
the twenties Brecht is: in his fascination with gangsterdom, sport, jazz,
the Anglo-Saxon and the oriental, the cabaret, and finally Communism,
he swims with the tide. Even his moods of despondency are typical of an
era when 'no one had enough ego in themselves to do anything', as he
claims in a note describing his rootlessness and shiftlessness, his feeling
of being expendable and ephemeral. when he moved from one furnished
room to another in the early twenties (Tb., 213: c. 1930). Conceptions of
his life and work which see him as unusually aggressive, or riddled with
guilt, or living so unbalancedly that he needed eventually to turn to
Communism as a sort of religious retreat, are seeing him out of con-
text. The portrayals in his work of man as lonely, lost in the mass,
devoid of personal value, are not unique to him. Nor was he unusual
among Weimar intellectuals for his behaviour, particularly in his literary
feuds. A hard-hitting style was in favour from the expressionist genera-
tion on. It did not endear him to people; his friend Walter Benjamin
complains of his aggressiveness about matters of literary taste- but
admits to intransigence himself. 2
From 1919 to 1921 Brecht wrote theatre criticism for a left-wing Augs-
burg paper but was also much in Munich. His diaries are full of drunken
and violent scenes often revolving around sexual jealousy among his
Augsburg circle. Paula Banholzer made him the father of a son Frank
(born 1919, killed fighting for Hitler 194 3). From 1920 he tried to estab-
lish himself in Berlin, a fitter scene for his ambitions. A first visit was
cut short when he retreated precipitately from the apparent dangers of
the right-wing Kapp Putsch. On a second visit he negotiated with pub-
lishers and dramaturgs and was feted as a coming literary figure, but
quickly tired of the febrile life of theatrical and literary circles - and the
lack of firm contracts. He joined forces with another struggling drama-
tist, Arnolt Brannen, to match whose forename he adapted his own to
4 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
Bertolt, Nickel-framed glasses gave an ascetic, old-fashioned, pedantic
look which Brecht had affected even as a schoolboy; he now added a
flat cap- an attempt to give his slight and unmemorable physique some
character, and also useful to draw over his eyes so that no one could
see if he was concentrating or sleeping. 3 In due course glasses and cap
were joined by the leather jacket which gave him an image somewhere
between motor-cyclist and Moscow commissar, 4 but was offset by a silk
shirt (often dirty). In 1922 he spent time in hospital suffering from un-
dernourishment, and made a bad start to a producing career by quarrelling
with the cast in a play by Bronn en.
Im Dickicht der Stiidte ('In the Jungle of Cities', 1921-2) is one of
the works showing the fascination for Brecht of America, the land of
action. The squalor and stagnation of German- especially Augsburg-
life disgusted him (Tb. 11: 18.6.20). Impressions of Berlin add to the
characterisation of the city; the plot is a gratuitous fight to the death
between two men of Chicago moving beyond the routine constrictions
of urban life and communicating somehow in the loneliness of the mass-
if only negatively. It has affinities to absurd theatre, but Brecht is actu-
ally turning away from asocial individuality, and the play can be inter-
preted in a social light. In 1922 he was awarded the Kleist Prize and
thus established his reputation. Drums in the Night was produced in
Munich; Brecht assembled a cast and worked with them in bars, in the
countryside, informally, and generally interfered in the production. His
easy way with actresses made Marianne Zoff, a singer, his mistress since
1920, jealous. She was pregnant- their daughter, born 1923. became the
actress Hanne Hiob- and Brecht unwillingly remained in Munich, in-
creased his theatre experience by taking a post as dramaturg with an
index-linked salary- no small point in the inflation era- and married
Marianne, only to drive her mad by his hatred of babies, generosity with
her property and habit of inviting friends to share their tiny flat in the
Akademiestrasse. He insisted (his usual pattern) on freedom to consort
with other women, whilst not allowing her any latitude. They were
divorced in 1927.
In 1924 he produced his Leben Eduards II, an adaptation of Marlowe's
Edward II, in Munich; Brechtian ·theatre begins with this production, in
which in pursuance of an idea of Karl Valentin's soldiers wore white
make-up to show their fear in battle. In the same year he finally moved
to Berlin, where, together with Carl Zuckmayer, he was dramaturg at
the Deutsches Theater, a Max Reinhardt theatre run by Erich Engel, 5
the first producer of In the Jungle of Cities and later of The Threepenny
Opera, with whom Brecht carried on many amicable arguments. 6 From
1927 he worked with Erwin Piscator. Despite his attachment to things
and people that reminded him of Augsburg, a Berlin circle formed. Elisa-
beth Hauptmann became his secretary, translating material from English
Life of Brecht 5
sources. Emil Burri. a young writer and boxer, was his mentor in sport-
ing affairs, then the rage in Berlin; Paul Samson-Korner, a more famous
boxer, lent his friendship to get him publicity; but the only sport Brecht
personally participated in was driving. From 1923 he was in constant
contact with Helene Weigel, the Jewish actress who influenced his later
work more than perhaps anyone else. This unsentimental figure was re-
sponsible for all the organisation which was to allow him to go on work-
ing in his own way through a troubled era. Their first child, Stefan, was
born in 1924; the second, Barbara, in 1930. They married in 1928 (giving
a shock to Carola Neher, another actress Brecht thought much of, and
causing Elisabeth Hauptmann to attempt suicide).
Acquaintance with the prose of sporting magazines helped him to
develop the unemotional blank verse style which is one of his char-
acteristic contributions to German literature; but more public attention
was drawn by ostentatious feuds with such established poets as Franz
Werfel. On all occasions he attacked the pretentious and much-admired
literature of the day and praised detective fiction. Of older writers, only
Feuchtwanger and Alfred Doblin impressed him. Thomas Mann was bol.!r-
geois, subjective, annoyingly patronising- and too successful. Brecht, with
three children to support, struggled financially until a long-term contract
with a publisher, Ullstein, guaranteed him 500 Marks a month. Ullstein
lost heavily on this. So far, Brecht had developed a nihilistic set of
opinions, perhaps more to epater les bourgeois and publicise himself than
from deep necessity. Early defences of communism (such as Tb., 65:
15.9.20) merely show a pose. But a change was coming about. Between
1926 and 1930 a series of studies convinced him that the Marxian an-
alysis of economic and social problems was correct and that a rebel from
the middle classes such as himself should join world Communism and
work for the dictatorship of the proletariat. In July 1926 he noted that
so far he had written plays piecemeal, but if he were to become serious
about writing he would have to make a plan, a system, a tradition, a
style for himself. At least half-consciously, he sets out to become an all-
round author of classical, Goethean mould, rather than a specialist in one
or two genres like his major contemporaries. 7 The material he already
has: 'As heroic landscape I have the town, as point of view relativity, as
situation the influx of mankind into the great cities at the beginning of
the third millenium, as content the appetites (too big or too small), as
training for the public the gigantic social battles' (Tb., 208: late July
1926). The next year he could write that his early plays had been, with-
out his knowing, presentations of material ripe for Marxian interpreta-
tion: 'this Marx was the only spectator I had ever come across for my
plays' (15, 129: Der einzige Zuschauer fiir meine Stucke). That Marxism
answers certain questions is Brecht's main reason for embracing it. What
difference it makes is apparent in the two versions of Mann ist Mann
6 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
('Man is Man', 1924-6; revised 1931): in the earlier one the brainwashing
which alters the hero's personality and very identity (perhaps Pirandello
influenced the theme) is already interpretable as an artistic statement
of how hollow liberal theories of the free individual are, but is comical;
in the later one, while still funny, it is unmistakably rejected as part of
a capitalist-imperialist exploitation.
In 1928 Brecht conceived and executed the plan of adapting Gay's
Beggar's Opera, put in much work with Kurt Weill on the music, collab-
orated in the production, and had The Threepenny Opera- his first real
box-office success- on the stage by 31 August. It shows a transition to-
wards putting Marxism on the stage: to equate bourgeoisie and under-
world is radical enough, but no substitute for close social analysis, and
Macheath is more of a rascal than a villain. The production inaugurated
Ernst Josef Aufricht's Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, which with its in-
timate ensemble (Helene Weigel. Carola Neher, Lotte Lenya, Peter Lorre,
Ernst Busch and others) Brecht for a time thought of as 'his' theatre.
The intended successor to the original hit, however, was a mistake, and
Brecht withdrew his name half-way through. By now he was more inter-
ested in a constructive parody of opera, having more relevance to social
themes; this was Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny ('Rise and Fall
of the City of ·Mahagonny', 1928-9). Mahagonny is the urban jungle
again, now based on business, and the only capital crime there is lack of
money.
From about 1929, when Brecht witnessed the bloody dispersal of a
May Day march by the Berlin police, whose president was a Social Demo-
crat, he determines to aid the Communist cause in practical ways, though
he apparently never became a party member. With the rise of Nazism,
he may have looked to Communism's Russian connection as the only
counterweight to militaristic German nationalism. 8 He wrote the Lehr-
stucke- didactic pieces: largely simple, paratactically constructed, stylised
operatic texts on problems in bringing about social advance- for instance,
in Die Massnahme ('The Measures Taken', 1930), the Communist who
does not want to give up his individuality (well-meaning but too im-
pulsive: he is a forerunner of Shen Teh and Grusha in the later plays) in
favour of party teachings on revolutionary method (apparently inhumane,
but thought out as the best long-term answers). Some formal aspects are
influenced by the Claude-Milhaud opera Christophe Colomb, a narrative
and didactic work with ritual elements; and Brecht took the plot of at
least one of his didactic pieces from a No play. 9 Composers Brecht
worked with were Paul Hindemith and then the politically more con-
genial Hanns Eisler. It was the era of agitprop theatre, and like the
hundreds of socialist troupes in Germany at the time Brecht seeks a new
audience in the schools and the trade unions which will be open to his
message. But the plays are not party-line propaganda; they concentrate
Life of Brecht 7
more on problems of belonging to a collective, not on positive aspects.
By and large these texts are for amateurs. But the most brilliant pro-
duct of this period is a play for the professional stage, Die Heilige
Johanna der Schlachthofe ('Saint Joan of the Stockyards', 1929-31). whose
heroine discovers for herself the truth about the exploitation of the
American proletariat and dies proclaiming war on the capitalists. The
play is structured according to the phases of the trade cycle as ascer-
tained by Brecht's Marxian studies. Echoes of the Saint Joan story {Shaw's
play had been staged in Berlin). blank verse forms, and parodies of the
German classics show Brecht's use of the literary tradition. The play re-
mained unperformed in Germany10 until 1959; and Die Mutter {'The
Mother', 1931) could only be put on by young committed actors. not in
an established theatre. It takes a less pretentious approach to the class
war: the heroine learns about Communism and progresses in Leninist
awareness. the audience learns from her and with her; frequent apos-
trophes to the audience and interpolated songs draw attention from the
individual figures to the wider implications. Brecht had by now emerged·
as a Marxist writer, though not as a socialist-realist dramatist plugging
Soviet achievements; with the rise of nationalism the professional theatre
froze him out, and he went into film with Kuhle Wampe, a depiction of
the poverty and hopelessness of many Berlin workers of the time. By now
his circle had crystallised. Elisabeth Hauptmann was intimately concerned
in his discovery of Marxism and of the Japanese N6 play. translated the
Beggar's Opera for him and wrote much of certain of his works. 11 Mar-
garete Steffin researched for him and watched over his Marxist ortho-
doxy; she was the only one of his mistresses with whom he had a
relaxed and leisurely relationship.
Hitler's rise to power meant immediate exile (followed by withdrawal
of German citizenship in 1935) and poverty through loss of royalties.
In Vienna. Helene Weigel's relatives and the critic Karl Kraus helped the
family. In Lugano, Brecht attempted to assemble a circle of kindred
spirits. In Paris. he made some money from the ballet scenario Die
sieben Todsunden {'The Seven Deadly Sins', 1933), which shows how one
gets on in the world by avoiding vice - that is, by being unnatural. Poverty
forced him to accept from Karin Michaelis the loan of a house in Thuro,
Denmark; but before long, with money provided by their parents, he and
Helene Weigel bought a house near Svendborg, the home of the family
for the next few years. Margarete Steffin was in attendance, and Barbara
had been smuggled out of Germany by an English welfare worker. The
Danish theatre showed some interest in the exile's work, though as it
turned out he had little success there. An early visitor was Ruth Berlau,
a Copenhagen actress and Communist, later Brecht's assistant, mistress,
photographer and archivist- important to a writer who in successive
hurried moves left many boxes of temporarily abandoned work behind.
8 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
He pressed friends- Hanns Eisler, the aesthetician Walter Benjamin, the
Marxist thinker Karl Korsch- to join him in Denmark, where he had
an extensive working library on Marxism, salvaged from Berlin, to attract
them. Whilst advising exiled anti-fascists not known to the regime to go
back to Germany and work underground, he also respected those who,
like Caspar Neher, simply remained in Germany and kept out of politics.
tacitly denying their socialism.
A visit to Russia in 1932 had strengthened his feeling that this was
the path to the ending of force and oppression, though violence and in-
justice were still found on it. He did not want to live in exile in such a
geographically and culturally distant country, but in 193 5, seeing no pros-
pect of an early return home, went to see whether he could live in Russia.
Piscator was doing so and wanted Brecht to work with him on a Ger-
man-language theatre. But Brecht was unimpressed: the theatre in ques-
tion became a party-line affair with no appeal, the talents of Piscator and
Carola Neher were fallow, his friend Tretiakov was in disgrace and Meyer-
hold, whom he admired, suspect to the authorities. In the next years,
Piscator had to leave Russia, Tretiakov and Carola Neher died in labour-
camps. Brecht, listing friends in Russia whom he knows to have been
arrested or never hears from, is harsh about circumstances there (Aj., 1.
36: Jan 1939). Had he settled there he would have been in physical
danger. Neither the Popular Front period of 1935-7, nor the Hitler-
Stalin Pact- each a compromise with anti-Communist parties, and a
weakening of the party's purity which Brecht as an intellectual could not
be expected to understand- reduced his suspicions of Stalin's politics.
He visited London on business in 1934 and 193 6, and got a contract to
assist with the script of a Richard Tauber film; but all his suggestions
were ignored, and even a £500 fee could not compensate him. In New
York he had frustrations of a different order: the Theater Union planned
to put on The Mother but did not espouse his ideas about presentation.
Travelling to New York at their expense, he criticised everything from the
quality of the cast to the lack of political (i.e. Communist) awareness in
the whole organisation, so that a quarrel was inevitable. Thus in both
capitalist and socialist countries Brecht found it impossible to realise
his theatrical ideas.
With Eisler's help he revised in 1934 Die Rundkopfe und die Spitz-
kopfe ('Roundheads and Peakheads'), a play started in 1929 containing
his materialist interpretation of Hitler's anti-Semitism. There was topic-
ality in the poems he wrote for radio programmes beamed at Germany
too; and he agreed to be a co-editor of Das Wort, a Moscow German-
language literary periodical, though this post gave him no influence. With
little to distract him. he wrote a great deal in the late thirties. Two prose
works. Die Geschiifte des Herrn Julius Caesar ('Mr Julius Caesar's Busi-
ness Deals') and Tui-Roman ('Tui-Novel'), remained weighty fragments.
Life of Brecht 9
I hope to have avoided in 'Baal' and 'Jungle' a great error of other art:
its attempt to carry the spectator with it [mitzureissen]. I instinctively
leave distances [Abstlinde] here and see to it that my effects (of poetic
and philosophical nature) remain limited to the stage. The spectator's
'splendid isolation' [in English in the original] is not violated, it is
not sua res, quae agitur, he is not lulled by being invited to empathise
[mitzuempfinden]. to incarnate himself in the hero . . . There is a
higher kind of interest: that in the parable [Gleichnis], the Other, the
Confused [Unubersehbaren], Strange' (Tb., 187: 10.2.22; 15, 62).
scene, they may- in historical plays - give dates and background material,
showing the relationship of history and stage action.
All narrative procedures bridge the gap between stage and audience.
Brecht's stage is never, from the outset, a closed world. For the first
production of Drums in the Night the theatre was hung with placards
with such warnings as 'Don't gawp so romantically!' to wake the audi-
ence from its hypnotic trance. With Man is Man, Brecht broke with the
convention of natural exposition and let the protagonist present himself,
his status and his plans directly in an address to the audience. Figures
temporarily abandon their roles and step into the audience's world. From
the popular melodrama Brecht developed the use of asides to audience,
for information and comment. Similarly songs from the Threepenny
Opera on are narrative elements, definite interruptions of the dramatic
action rather than parts of it, and they can communicate directly from
author to public. Then Brecht loves to have characters telling stories. In
Mr Puntila and his Man Matti, not only are things narrated which could
have been incorporated in the dialogue, but much of the play consists
of stories unrelated to the action but filling out the theme. The most
pointed narration is the deposition of a witness in court; Brecht loves
court-scenes with their more or less dispassionate search for the truth
about some social action. Psychology is relevant here only in its social
aspects; the actual episode is seen at one remove; and the play-
wright can show how one arm of the state, the judicature, regards
the problems arising in the society it controls. The process of dis-
covering the truth is the material of Brecht's basic exemplar of theatre,
the classic 'Street Scene' in the Messingkauf {16, 546-58; B. on
Theatre, 121-8; cf. On everyday Theatre, 9, .766-70; B. Poems, 176-
9). An action of actual relevance is presented in such a way as to
make it easier for the spectator to give an opinion on the subject (lead-
ing to criticism). Theatre is a section of reality engaged in a play, a game
representing some other section of reality. This game makes social-
historical complexes, the class and individual forces at work in a
historical epoch, visible. It does not claim completeness, it does not
provide an expose of Marxism for those too lazy to read Marx for them-
selves, and it has little to do with socialist realism, which demands
mimetic reproduction of an action having a progressive typicality inter-
preted in limited ideological terms. Rather Brecht aims at some analogy
with reality, and at the collection of attitudes which suggest to the
audience possible implications outside the theatre. Here he is followed
by Friedrich Diirrenmatt, who however makes cynicism, not productivity,
the content of his implied lessons. Against the usual yardstick of realism,
'a work of art is more realistic as reality is easier to recognise in it',
Brecht sets up the assertion 'that a work of art is more realistic the more
recognisably reality is mastered in it' (Aj., 1, 142: 4.8.40). It is an am-
Theory and Practice of Brechtian Theatre 41
bitious aim and means that the plays and productions are more difficult
to digest than conventionally realistic products, particularly as the
episodically constructed play has a wealth of implications and contra-
dictions. 'the unitary whole consists of independent parts, each of which
can be immediately confronted with the corresponding part-processes
in reality- indeed must be' (Aj., 1, 140: 3.8.40). Mastering reality is one
of the two tasks of theatre: the other, enjoyment, is inseparable from
it. 'The theatre must in fact remain something entirely superfluous,
though this indeed means that it is the superfluous for which we live.
Nothing needs less justification than pleasure' (16, 664: Kleines Organon
§3; B. on Theatre, 181). 'the world is grasped as capable of being
changed. a moral imperative "change it!" need not take effect. the
theatre simply gains for its audience somebody who produces the world'
(Aj., 1, 194: 1.11.40). Causality is important in this theatre as under-
standing of causes is necessary for mastering the world - in contrast to
Aristotelian theatre in which a state of affairs whose causes may remain
unexplained produces an emotional reaction (Aj., 1, 136£.; 2.8.40). Deeper
structures are to be shown, not necessarily surface reality.
A useful term in the analysis of Brecht's plays, but one with which he
himself had difficulty (sometimes defining it more narrowly than I shall),
is Cestus (untranslatable: attitude as shown in the signs we use in com-
municating with others). At its widest this means the basic attitude
which informs any particular transaction between people. 33 The trans-
action can be a whole work of art presented to a public, a conversation,
a single speech considered as an independent component of a conversa-
tion. Gestus concentrates on interactions between people, for Brecht dis-
liked psychological observations which could not be expressed in social
interplay and put to work in the recognition and changing of social
circumstances. It includes the unspoken 'languages' of demeanour by
which we recognise others' behaviour, but language itself also. Its theory
is basically Hegelian. What is said in a dialogue cannot be interpreted
out of context, but only when placed within the complex interaction of
theses and antitheses which is conversation. Theatre aims to communi-
cate from stage to audience a demonstration of social facts, so the basic
gestus of theatre is demonstration (see 15, 341: Kurze Beschreibung einer
neuen Technik der Schauspielkunst; B. on Theatre, 136). Within this,
different passages of a play represent the gestus of particular social facts
and relationships: the gestus of deferring to someone who may give you
money, of attempting to convince by logical argument, etc. In analysing
the text one may always ask what the gestus of a play, a scene, an
episode, a speech is. This helps to fix the inner structure of the play. for
the succession and interplay of different kinds of gestus is basic to the
dramatist's art. Brecht's scene titles often hint at the gestus of a par-
ticular scene. He also suggests setting up 'a scheme of quantums of effect,
42 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
which one would look for in the scenes, poetic, dramaturgic, showing the
history of manners, social-political. psychological (furthering knowledge
of human nature). etc. one could make statements about these quan-
tums which could have come from aesthetic, social-historical. psycho-
logical textbooks': for instance, isolating the social history shown in
scene 2 of Mother Courage in a generalisation which could find its place
in a textbook: 'the dealers plundered their own armies as well as the
inhabitants of the enemy country' (Aj .• 1. 206£.; 9.12.40).
Brecht never speaks of establishing aesthetic rules for the stage, only
of techniques, functional means to an extraneous end (19, 411: Notizen
zur Arbeit- Uber iisthetische Gesetze). The number of techniques avail-
able for furthering the ends he has in view is unlimited; Brecht gives
the examples he happens to have at hand, not intending to hold anyone
else in the straitjacket of his limitations. Brecht-theatre is an extensible
concept. Others following his ethos and attitude in their way. using their
imagination, will impose their own flavour on their productions. 'My rules
are to be applied only by those who retain independent judgment, a
spirit of contradiction and a social imagination, and who are in touch with
the progressive sectors of the public and are thus themselves progressive,
rounded, thinking people. I cannot muzzle the ox that grindeth out
the corn' (16. 600: Messingkauf- Das Theater des Stuckeschreibers).
Brecht hopes to find a tradition which, adapting to unforeseeable
conditions of the future, will give scope to the productivity of gener-
ations- not a rigid style which, fossilising. will lose touch with reality.
Werner Hecht points out: 'Brecht's way of working, that is his tech-
nique at the desk and in the theatre . . . delivers to us that which
preserves his theatre from fossilisation: the ability to find readings of
plays for the contemporary audience; doubt of extant solutions; contact
with the audience as a principle; a range of models as impulses for
creative work . . . Brecht's method delivers no recipes. There is no
"style" in the Berliner Ensemble.' 84 There is only a general attitude: to
present things in the light of reason and sensuality (the English way)
rather than of pedantry and passion (the German way)(Mat. G., 76). Con-
versely one should look critically at the techniques Brecht invented, which
can only remain valid as long as they continue, despite changing social
contexts, to produce the effects he had in mind. They are not fetishes
with absolute rights to immortality. Manfred Wekwerth points out,
for instance, that Brecht introduced the light. half-height curtain used
during scene changes at a time when audiences universally expected a
heavy proscenium curtain to descend; but that expectation no longer
being present, the Brechtian curtain no longer has its shock effect and
has instead become a fetish. the outward sign of a pseudo-Brecht style
which does not necessarily correspond to any inward thought. 86 So all
Theory and Practice of Brechtian Theatre 43
that follows about Brecht's stage techniques is to be taken as a report
with ideas in it, not as an instruction manual.
The cardinal point of Brecht's theories of distancing on the stage is
the work of the actor. Given his head, the actor could- German stars of
the twenties excelled at this - by his own aura create empathy and
illusion which would undo all efforts at distancing. Brecht early objects
to actors spending so much effort learning to feel like Richard III and
not being able to carry a glass of water across the stage. They have
inadequate elegance, self-observation and technical skills: and they have
not the kind of knowledge of human nature one needs for playing poker
(15, 111: Weniger Gips). They should come down off their pedestal.
The first stage of Brechtian acting proper- preserved for us to some
extent in the film of The Threepenny Opera - is the supercooled style.
The actor takes a distance from the figure, acts dispassionately; he
refuses to give way to the emotions implicit in a speech, rather he
quotes what he has to say. This stage starts with the historic moment
when Helene Weigel, as the maid reporting ]ocasta's death in Oedipus
Rex, delivered her lines with a sense of their importance rather than of
their horror (15, 190f.: Dialog iiber Schauspielkunst; B. on Theatre, 28).
Brecht generalises later: 'If he [the actor] would just restrict himself
to bringing out the sense of the words without more feeling than hap-
pens to arise as he is talking, then the spectator would once more be
enabled to feel something and enjoy food that has not been predigested
for him' (15, 412f.: Erfahrungen). Distance is gained in various ways.
Brecht liked to cast young actors for the roles of old people, which
automatically encourages the actor in observation and discourages
empathy. A favourite rehearsal technique (practically the only one which
his actors recognised as specifically Brechtian) is turning speeches into
reported speech. 'She said she was ashamed to offer her son such poor
soup . . .' immediately establishes a distance between role and actress.
Or speeches are read against the grain: what seems unique and highly
charged is taken as routine and requiring no emphasis- in the 1932 film
Kuhle Wampe the censor objected less to an unemployed man's killing
himself, than to his doing it as casually as if peeling a cucumber; con-
versely. routine ways of talking may be emphasised, so that the audi-
ence has to see them in a fresh light and recognise their implications
for the critical analysis of the whole society of which they are mani-
festations.
In fact the actor comments. To do this, he must have a social per-
spective on his role. Brecht is willing to help here. For instance, his
Zwischenszenen ('Interpolated Scenes', 1939). extra episodes for classical
plays. show such things as how much Romeo is the spoilt child of his
class and has no feeling for subordinates -which will affect interpreta-
tion of the part. The actor cannot have in himself the materials for
44 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
creating by empathetic processes the characters of both Romeo and
Lear (15, 391f.: Schauspielkunst); so he must observe, appreciate, analyse
and finally copy reality, rather than exploiting his own psychology. The
analysis means such things as historicising: finding what parts of char-
acters' behaviour are timeless, which belong to the particular epoch only
(Looking for the new and old, 9, 793; B. Poems, 424). The character is
built up from the outside, not from inner emotion but from attitudes
and gestures. The resulting copy of an observed reality is applied to the
business of speaking a dramatic text which is fiction- to be quoted from,
not believed in (15, 342-4 and 351-2: Kurze Beschreibung • . . ;
B. on Theatre, 136-8 and 142). The actor continually compares what
the author has written with his own experience of reality, and in the
light of this comparison stresses some features of the text which
the author perhaps did not intend to be stressed; he is reluctant to let the
action take the course intended by the author, he shows that he is
being dragged along, he adds elements alien to the author's conception
of the part (15, 402: Aufbau der Figur). A simple example of com-
parison with a reality obviously outside the play would be the way the
actors in Mother Courage stress the 'Adolf' in the name of the King of
Sweden, the invader of Poland. Suggested rehearsal procedures are to
memorise where, at first reading. one found the text odd; to invent and
speak reasons for the oddities of the figure's behaviour ('I was in a bad
mood because I hadn't eaten, and said: .. .'); to exchange roles, copy-
ing the other actor or diverging from his interpretation; to improvise in
the style of the author (15, 409-11; Anweisungen an die Schauspieler).
That the actor does not depend on his own psychological resources to
build up an interpretation does not mean he cannot put across his own
feelings. In developing his own social perspective he develops emotions
about the figure (not coinciding with the figure's emotions) and finds
ways of superimposing them on his interpretation. Helene Weigel in the
part of Senora Carrar broke into tears during performance, perhaps on
a day when the Spanish Civil War was going badly. It may have been
bad acting; but the actress is entitled to her feelings, as long as they are
those of a thinking, socially committed person (16, 601: Messingkauf
- Das Theater des Stuckeschreibers; M. Dial., 70f.). Inspiration is
allowed, within the framework of reason; so are tears over Senora Carrar
(not tears arising from identification with her). Sympathy is allowed,
empathy is suspect. 86 The actor remains aware of what he is doing, what
he is transmitting to the audience. Only if the actor is aware can the
audience have its awareness heightened. The actor defends and criticises
the character he plays; but he may defend warmly. In this event the
cool awareness is pushed into the background. At some points of Brecht's
plays tension mounts to a point inimical to cool analysis: in Mother
Courage scene 3, for instance. Weigel had all the art of an actress
Theory and Practice of Brechtian Theatre 45
skilled in creating illusion, and put it to work here- but it had to be
abandoned in scene 4, which it could ruin.
As Riilicke-Weiler (pp. 165f.) points out, a representational (as opposed
to self-identificatory) style of acting has often been fostered by authors
and theatres with a critical attitude to social reality, from Diderot to
agitprop. The representational school is more likely to be able to come
to grips with the social aspect, the identificatory with the psychological
aspect of a role. Since Brecht is content neither with two-dimensional
figures which merely represent a class, nor with asocially seen heroic
individuals, he requires from the actor a synthesis of the approaches.
{It must be remembered that the Hegelian synthesis does not supersede
its components, but puts them in their place within the scheme of things.)
In Moscow in 1935 Brecht saw a demonstration by the Chinese actor
Mai Lan-fang, which led to the crystallisation of his thought on the
duality of the actor as actor and figure, and its technical possibilities.
The duality is observable in the villain of our nineteenth-century melo-
drama, whose 'stage leer' shows the actor's distance from the role; but
such forerunners are not actually examples of distancing; 37 the con-
scious, primary, social and intellectual aims of Brecht are missing in
them. In Mai Lan-fang Brecht noted the use of conventional gestures
to show a series of aspects: tea is made; made in the traditional way;
in the traditional way by a girl; by an impatient girl; by an actor using
gestures apposite to an impatient girl (15, 427: Uber das Theater der
Chinesen §4). There is nothing inscrutably oriental about this: Brecht
could have seen the same in classical ballet, had he wanted to. In any
case he must substitute for the symbolic and hieratic meanings of the
elements of Chinese theatre an analogy to empirical reality.
A further stage of Brechtian acting, dependent on clear recognition of
the duality of actor and figure, is reached 'with Charles Laughton as
Galileo in 1947. Its elements are Laughton's eminence and his power of
relaxation. The public which admires the actor comes to see him show-
ing 'what he imagines Galileo to have been'; 'the demonstrator Laughton
does not disappear in the Galileo whom he is showing' (16, 683f.:
Kleines Organon §49; B. on Theatre, 194, but I have altered the trans-
lation). He could produce an admirable effect by turning into Galileo,
but he does not; he remains two entities in one body, Laughton and
Galileo, and so his acting combines two types of gestus: the constant
gestus of showing on Laughton's part, whatever gestus the text calls
for on Galileo's part. And Laughton relaxes: Brecht imagines him smoking
a cigar and 'laying it down now and again in order to show us some
further characteristic attitude of the figure in the play' (ibid.). The mysti-
cal trance is radically removed from the theatre experience.38 As with
the social function of theatre, so with the acting technique involved: it
can all be derived from a single simple everyday example provided by
46 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
Brecht in the street scene. The actor, though possessing much more
sophisticated skills, is in the position of the bystander demonstrating,
after an accident, how it happened. He does not intend to be taken for
either the victim or the driver, but to make clear how the victim moved
and to convey the flavour of the driver's self-exculpations. The story
is primary. the characterisation derived from it. The accident is over,
the bystander is not in danger, he can relax and be himself. But his
evidence may be important, for instance if there is a prosecution
later.
One must admit that Brechtian acting often seems fuller of mystique
than of meat. His own descriptions of actors at work consist chiefly of
analyses of techniques for building up interpretations, preparing and
rehearsing. Weigel and Laughton are the main cases in which he claims
the further specific quality of conscious demonstration. Thomas K. Brown
concluded after enquiries in the Berliner Ensemble in 1972 that no
specifically Brechtian distancing procedure was at work there. Ekkehard
Schall was unable to explain how to demonstrate in doing an action that
he had made a decision not to do the opposite, or in making a statement
that it was false though the character said it in good faith (both demands
made by Brecht). His explanation of showing that he was only demon-
strating a figure was vitiated by the fact that when on stage he turned
temporarily from Coriolanus into Schall, it merely looked as though he
had forgotten his lines. Nor were members of the audience being affected
in the ways the theory demands. 39 Even in Brecht's lifetime his actors
were unclear as to whether they used a peculiar mode of work (Theater-
arbeit, 412). Angelika Hurwicz seems to think not. 40 It is not easy to
see how an actor can learn procedures to enable him to represent two
different things to the audience simultaneously. The decision not to per-
form an action can only be shown by the traditional means of starting
to do it and then stopping. And the effect of demonstrating, rather than
being, a figure can be gained only if the actor can for reasons implicit
in his own personality - think of the relaxed geniality of Laughton, so
much more at home on the stage than in life! -and out of the fulness
of his enjoyment of acting give the impression of an actor enjoying
himself in giving a zestful interpretation of a role. This is a matter of
ethos and experience, not properly speaking technical; and Laughton, for
one, had this capability before he met Brecht.
It is then perhaps time to debunk the concept of Brechtian acting, to
sweep away the abstruse and unrealisable technical demands and leave
ourselves with two things: the body of training and rehearsal techniques
by which Brecht encourages distancing as between actor and role, and
the actor's ethos which makes the spirit of criticism and the spirit of
enjoyment parts of his personality on and off stage. Brecht's require-
ment that empathy between audience and role should be avoided is then
Theory and Practice of Brechtian Theatre 47
to be fulfilled in two ways: by the intervention of distancing elements
in text, design and music; and by the constant ground-tone of watching
the actor enjoy giving a good performance.
Brecht tends towards a less authoritarian idea of theatrical production
than is usual, so that actors, designer and so on are free to impose their
own attitudes. He sets up against Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk the idea of
a composite work of art which can tolerate differences of approach on the
part of its various makers. In the attempt to make the music of Maha-
gonny, like the words, appeal more to the reason than to the emotions
he demands music to interpret (not heighten) the text, go beyond (not
restate) it, and express an opinion (not illustrate) (17, 1011: Anmer-
kungen zur Oper " ... Mahagonny"; B. on Theatre, 38). A little later
he praises jazz techniques for their combination of individual freedom to
improvise with general discipline (17, 1032: Anmerkungen zur "Mass-
nahme"). In 1941 he encouraged Simon Parmet to use his orchestra for
independent statements in writing music for Mother Courage (Aj., 1, 240:
2.2.41).
Illusionism in decor is done away with. 'It is more important today
that the decor should tell the spectator he is in a theatre, rather than,
say. in Aulis. The theatre as theatre must take on that fascinating reality
that the boxing arena has. The best thing is to show the machinery, the
winches and the flies' (15, 79: Dekoration). When Meyerhold's company
visited Berlin in 1930 Brecht found ideas for continuing his work: both
believed in visible lighting. The designer in Brecht-theatre has, like the
composer. independence and responsibility. Elegance is a precondition of
all his work. Caspar Neher (following techniques of Piscator's) early used
the bipartite stage, a three-dimensional room small in the foreground and
a wide backdrop showing the social scene; and also static projections of a
symbolic nature. Brecht explains that a text set among a small number of
people calls for staging which will fill it out by showing the wider func-
tional aspects. To clarify the implications of a simple dialogue in a factory
yard, the decor uses financial and other data about the concern in ques-
tion, showing how it treats its workers and who gets the profits (15, 456f.:
Zeichen und Symbole).
The stage began to tell a story. The narrator was no longer missing,
along with the fourth wall. Not only did the background adopt an
attitude to the events on the stage - by big screens recalling other
simultaneous events elsewhere, by projecting documents which con-
firmed or contradicted what the characters said, by concrete and in-
telligible figures to accompany abstract conversations, by figures and
sentences to support mimed transactions whose sense was unclear-
but the actors too refrained from going over wholly into their role ...
(15, 164: Vergniigugstheater oder Lehrtheater; B. on Theatre, 71).
48 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
The designer. like other members of the team, works at social facts and
presents the mass of data in a form in which the audience can master it
and find the exercise useful. He is not afraid of the written word as a
design element: it shows he has been thinking (15, 464: Literarisierung
der Buhnen). Design also means creating areas which reflect social circum-
stances (a capitalist's house is too large for his actions, a proletarian's
too small) and previous users as well as present inhabitants (15, 449f.:
Fixierung des Raums bei induktiver Methode). Where in conventional
dramaturgy spaces express their occupants. here they show their occu-
pants' adaptation to existing circumstances. Whilst Brecht sometimes
works with a bare stage, as in Mother Courage where a constant white
ground suggests the spatial and temporal limitlessness and barrenness
of war. his dramatic language needs use of all the theatre's resources. He
did not require every word on stage to be audible - provided the set and
groupings told the story. The Berliner Ensemble used lavish sets and
costumes when indicated: Brecht is said to have insisted on real copper
and no papier-mache for the decor for Galileo: 'If I set riches in front
of the proletariat. it must be genuine riches.' 41 The totality of the set
forms a harmony of its own, different for each production, on which
Brecht was very insistent, noticing if something was an inch out of
place; props. down to the tin spoon which Weigel as Mother Courage
wore through a loop in her padded jacket, combine aesthetic harmony.
functional solidity and symbolic value.
The Chinese theatre does without illusion, and Brecht found it worth
learning from the way it uses masks. costume and setting to comple-
ment the work of the actor; but his practice was already fixed, probably
with a certain influence from the Japanese N6 plays, by 1930. Masks do
away with the illusion of reality and draw attention to the social fact
that a person in the imperialist era is indeed a persona, a fa~ade put up
to hide or even smother the character rather than express it. Masks are
often specified for the ruling classes and their helpers, whose personality
is held to be distorted and forced into a rigid mould by their exertions
to gain and retain power; less for the workers and men in the street.
Shen Teh has a mask when in her vain pursuit of the higher good she be-
comes Shui Ta. Brecht, fascinated by nuances of costume from the time
of The Threepenny Opera on. worked out the function of costume fully
in the Berliner Ensemble with the help of the costume designer Kurt
Palm. Costume is first a social indicator: expensive or cheap, new or
old, worn evenly or unevenly. according to the wearer's work and finances;
but then it is a personal statement: members of a mass are marked as
individuals by variations of clothing. ambition is portrayed by giving
a figure clothing above his social station, and so on.
All the theatrical arts are placed on a single level. and their relation-
ship consists of their mutually distancing each other's efforts (16, 699:
Theory and Practice of Brechtian Theatre 49
Kleines Organon §74; B. on Theatre. 204). In practice writing, direction,
acting and design are the core. Music is important and independent, but
still often given menial functions, notably to indicate that the plane of
dramatic action is being left for that of meditation or of unreality (in
The Good Person especially). Dance gets a mention in the Short Organum,
but is not prominent in practice: Brecht had to give up the idea of featur-
ing a dance at the end of The Caucasian Chalk Circle, one of his few
theatrical capitulations.
'it is impossible to finalise a play without the stage ... only the stage
decides between the possible variants' (Aj .• 1, 122: 30.6.40). So the play
reaches its final form during the very complex process of Brechtian re-
hearsal. The director takes a modest part here - Brecht calls him Proben-
leiter, rehearsal manager. Brecht did not theorise in rehearsal. Whereas
Gordon Craig. whose movement from theatre of reproduction to theatre
of representation parallels Brecht's thought, wanted to go on to a theatre
of creation pursuing transcendent aesthetic aims under the direction of
a super-regisseur whom he calls the monarch. Brecht refuses any offer
of a crown and wants a democratic and socialist theatre. He tries as
director to see that the basic social aspects come across, he helps his co-
workers to understand the dialectics of their roles but does not impose on
them with his interpretations (16, 759f.: Die Spielleitung Brechts). That
Brecht never spoke the lines to suggest an interpretation is however un-.
true: he did so in rehearsing Galileo and recommended the procedure
to Benno Besson, whilst forbidding Manfred Wekwerth to use it.~ 2 He
did not theorise. nor psychologise. preferring to work from the outside,
from attitudes shown in interpersonal relationships, and pragmatically.
He directed from the auditorium. ·
A lengthy note in Theaterarbeit (25 6-8; and see the notes on Theater-
arbeit in B. on Theatre) distinguishes fifteen stages in the preparation of a
production. (1) Analysis of the play -looking for social lessons and
impulses, turning-points of the plot. structure of events; writing a short
summary; thinking how to get the story line and its social significance
clear. (2) Preliminary discussion of a set or sets. production of sketches
showing groupings of actors and their postures at various points. (3)
Preliminary casting- not type-casting. for the sake of the actor and of
realism. (4) Reading through with little expression or characterisation,
to familiarise the cast with the plot. (5) Trying out positions, movements,
accentuations, gestures. including those invented by the actors; moving
towards characterisation. (6) Set rehearsal: marrying intended sets with
movements and groupings, so that sets can be completed early and props
found. Later rehearsals are with final sets and props. (7) Detail rehearsal
of each gestic section. building of characterisation. rehearsal of the tran-
sitions from section to section. (8) Run through, pulling elements together
and getting relative emphasis and continuity right. (9) Discussion of
50 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
costume and make-up- only possible when characterisation is fixed; but
high heels, beards, etc., can be tried out earlier. (10) Check rehearsals to
see if demands under (1) are being met; groupings photographed for ex-
amination. (11) Tempo rehearsals: a series of dress rehearsals to fix
tempo and running time. (12) Main dress rehearsal. (13) A quick
run-through without prompter, with gestures only hinted at. (14) Pre-
views: checking the reaction of audiences, preferably homogeneous ones
(students, a factory group) to allow discussion. Correction rehearsals.
(15) Public premiere- the director is not present, actors are given their
head.
Rehearsal also included the production of a sort of super prompt·copy
showing signs for music and sound-effects, cues and pauses, the end
of sections within the scene, and the words emphasised in every single
sentence of the dialogue. 43 This leads into the characteristic Berliner En-
semble institution of the Modellbuch, 'Model Book' of a production,
worked out under Brecht's guidance by Ruth Berlau. It consists of be-
tween 450 and 600 photos of the production, keyed to the text. Photos
were taken from a single position, in the circle and rather to the side
(unless the beauty of a particular piece of business was better shown
from elsewhere), and selected to show the main changes of groupings
onstage and the most characteristic gestures. They should ideally tell the
story even without the help of dialogue. Production assistants took notes
during rehearsals of interesting discussions, salient points insisted on by
the director, timings for each scene, and so on; these notes. collated,
form a commentary in the model book. Photos of costumes and masks
against neutral backgrounds, and of sets and props, are appended. Cer-
tain model books were eventually printed, others existed in maquette
form to be borrowed by other theatres planning to perform plays in the
Berliner Ensemble repertoire. Sometimes Brecht made the following of
the model a condition for allowing a performance. Properly used, the
model book explains the points Brecht would wish to be stressed in pro-
duction and helps its user to see the problems of the work concerned
as Brecht saw them. No director is expected to negate his own theatre's
traditions and his own tendencies; but working with the model makes
him confront them with Brecht's intentions, an aspect very important
when so much of Brecht's thought cannot be read from the plain text.
And the model book imposes standards: if the user cannpt think of a
better solution, he can at least copy what a good theatre did! 44 Brecht
defends the art of copying, done intelligently; but Werner Hecht has
amusingly exemplified the results of too mechanical copying. as when a
designer with a very large stage to work on copied the proportions of
the Berliner Ensemble set for The Good Person, so that what should be
a very crowded little shop became a spacious area and the scenic effect
was lost. 4~
Theory and Practice of Brechtian Theatre 51
Most lessons about Brecht theatre in action are of course derived from
the example of the Berliner Ensemble during the short period when
Brecht was its. chief director, dating for practical purposes from the
1949 Mother Courage. This was his first opportunity to try out in a
series of productions with a static base the concepts he had been writ-
ing about, all through his exile years, which sum up to his mature
view of theatre. The Berliner Ensemble did not have to be miserly with
material resources or rehearsal time. Its team consisted of the finest
theatrical talents in the most important fields, and they thought out
every production, from the basic conception of a drama whose emotional
effect is based on its success in analysing the deep mainsprings of society,
through important technical characteristics such as the dismissal of atmos-
pheric lighting effects, to the superficial trademarks such as the half-
curtain. This thinking-out was done in theatrical, not theoretical, terms.
In conversation Brecht attached more importance than in his writings to
the imponderabilia of actors' personalities, the sudden inspiration which
produces a new and enjoyable theatrical effect, and so on. The result was
exciting; East Berlin became the 'obligatory pilgrimage' 46 of all avant-
garde theatrical artists.
Yet there is another aspect. In the reception of Mother Courage Brecht
saw dangers for the understanding of his theatre. Despite all attempts
to make the protagonist a hyena of the battlefield, people insisted on
feeling for and with her as a victim of war. They were politically not ready
for the message. The work that followed in the Berliner Ensemble was direc-
ted more towards the political education and activisation of the audience
than towards the realisation of a true Brecht-theatre. He went on record
as saying that the present state of the theatre did not allow the full ex-
ploitation in practice of his theories (Theaterarbeit, 412). Whereas he had
said his epic theatre was unsuitable for short-term propaganda, the
repertoire was biased towards political topicality, including Strittmatter's
Katzgraben as a comment on agrarian reform and Becher's Winter-
schlacht apropos of West German rearmament. 47 And there has long been
a strain of criticism which felt the productions of Brecht's own works
did not do justice to them. The overriding need, however, was not to
satisfy critics insistent on Brechtian purity, but to keep in touch with
the audience- many of whose attitudes had survived from before 1945,
even from before 1919 {16, 906£.: Einige lrrtumer uber die Spielweise
des Berliner Ensembles). 'The political vision of our public is only slowly
getting into focus' (16, 832: Katzgraben-Notate, Neuer lnhalt, neue
Form).
The realisation of disjunctive theatre was also hampered by the tend-
ency to treat Brecht as a Grand Old Man. He approved of the practice
of recording his rehearsals on tape, as an example to posterity of what
can be done in a theatre with that Utopian luxury, unlimited rehearsal
52 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
time; 48 but the result is to enhance, rather than limit, the status of the
director. Yet his leadership did guarantee movement in the direction of
Brecht-theatre, and his productions and model books remain authoritative
until a company arises which, starting from his artistic ethos, can
develop independently in his spirit. This company is not necessarily the
Berliner Ensemble, which for some time after 1956 seemed concerned
to follow more than to develop the master's practice. Helene Weigel
was criticised for rigidity and autocracy. After Manfred Wekwerth's de-
parture in 1969 and her death in 1971 there were changes. 49 Her succes-
sor, Ruth Berghaus, though an accomplished Brechtian, has been charged
with eclecticism, neglect of the Brecht tradition and putting on plays
with no didactic purpose. However, Manfred Wekwerth has now re-
turned as director. Another noteworthy Brechtian nucleus was built
up in the 1960s by Fritz Bennewitz at the Deutsches National theater,
Weimar. 50 Brecht's influence in East Germany has grown since his
death, despite the persistence of basic doubts about the acceptability
of critical theatre under a socialist regime. Much the same goes for the
Soviet Union. 51 In West Germany Max Frisch's phrase, that he has
attained the 'hard-hitting ineffectiveness of a classic', is still apt (though
Brecht would have been critical of the capitalist world's definitions of
effectiveness and of classicality). In 1971-2 he outdistanced Shake-
speare in number of performances. 52 As for Brecht-theatre, a potential
carrier of the tradition is the West Berlin Schaubuhne, an ensemble of
independent artists directed with awareness of Brecht by Peter Stein, and
having plenty of time and material resources. 5 8
In the United States Brecht is still largely for the radical fringe, having
given rise to such way-out phenomena as the Bertold [sic] Brecht Memor-
ial Guerilla Theater of Austin, Texas. 54 Truly Brechtian productions are
rare in America as elsewhere. A few Brechtian directors have arisen in
Europe: Jean Vilar and Roger Planchon in France, Giorgio Strehler in
Italy. 55 In Great Britain his influence, mediated by Kenneth Tynan and
seen particularly in the work of Peter Hall, has been blamed for much
that is boring in the modern classical stage. If that is so, it is a mis-
understood and distorted influence. More fun was kept in the Brechtian
style by Joan Littlewood's Stratford productions, and the master would
have approved of Oh, What a Lovely War! But we must still echo
Michael Kustow's remark that the 'fruitful ambiguities' of Brecht's later
plays have not yet been confronted on the British stage. 56 We seem to
skirt round the four great plays this book is about; they are often per-
formed amateurishly, almost never well by any standards Brecht would
recognise. The latest production (The Good Woman of Setzuan, Royal
Court Theatre. London, 1977) runs true to form by cutting important
scenes.
1 Life ofGalileo, scene 2: the Doge tries to attract Galileo's attention (Berliner Ensemble 1957)
2 Life of Galileo, scene 12: Laughton with projection of instruments of torture (New York 194 7)
3 Mother Courage, scene 6: Courage counts stock and curses war (Berliner Ensemble 19 51)
Courage, scene 6: Courage counts stock and curses
counts stock and curses
5 The Good Person of Szechw an, street set (Frank furt 1952)
6a The Good Person of Szechwan, scene 7: 6b The Good Person of Szechwan, scene 8: Shui Ta supervises the
Shen Teh addresses the public (Berliner tobacco factory (Zurich 1943)
Ensemble 1957)
7a The Caucasian Chalk Circle , act 2: Grusha rescues Michael (Berliner
Ensemble 1954)
7b The Caucasian Chalk Circle , act 3: the bridge (Berliner Ensemble 1954)
8 The Caucasian Chalk Circle, act 6: Grusha argues with the Governor's Wife (Berliner Ensemble 1954)
4 The Life of Galileo
This play contains 'the most complete presentation of Brecht's intellec-
tual world'. 1 The first version was written in Denmark in November
1938 and revised early in 1939. It reached the stage in Zurich on 9
September 1943. A second version in English was worked out in collabor-
ation with Charles Laughton in California from December 1944 to
December 1945, and first performed in Beverly Hills on 31 July 1947.
This version, turned back into German by Elisabeth Hauptmann and
Benno Besson, and further altered by Brecht (third version). was put
on in Cologne on 16 April 1955 and by the Berliner Ensemble· in a
production prepared by Brecht and continued after his death by Erich
Engel. on 15 January 1957. Galileo was played by Ernst Busch, sets
designed by Caspar Neher. We are concerned mainly with the third
version.
Brecht designated the play 'biography' (Aj., 1, 274: 24.4.41). The term
'Life' in the title attaches it to two earlier plays: the early Marlowe
adaptation Life of Edward II, and The Mother, subtitled 'Life of the
Revolutionary Pelagea Vlassova from Tver'. After history made by
medieval kings and by the modern proletariat, we have history made
by a Renaissance man.
The scenes of Galileo are largely prefaced by dates: in some cases
a spread of years whose activities are to be exemplified in the scene,
in others a single turning-point in Galileo's fortunes.
Scene 2 [24 August 1609]: 'Galileo presents the Republic of Venice with
a new Discovery.' In the quest for his salary increase Galileo passes the
telescope off as his own invention at a ceremony in which he presents it
to the Doge and Senators. The Curator draws attention to its use in
war; Galileo's fifteen-year-old daughter Virginia performs the presenta-
tion; the lens-grinder sets up the instrument, and while it is being
examined Galileo tells his friend Sagredo what he has seen in the skies
with it. Virginia brings Ludovico who ironically compliments Galileo;
the Doge. a shy man, manages to get Galileo's attention and grant his
pay rise.
Scene 3 [10 January 1610; historical events of 7-13 January]: 'By means
of the Telescope Galileo discovers Phenomena in the Sky which prove the
Copernican System. Warned by his Friend against the possible Conse-
quences of his Researches. Galileo Professes his Belief in Man's Reason.'
Sagredo observes the moon through the telescope and Galileo interprets
what he sees: the moon is, like the earth, lit by the sun. Giordano
Bruno, burnt for heresy ten years before, was right. The Curator storms
in angry about the deception with the telescope which he has by now
discovered, refuses to be mollified by the promise of better star-charts
made with its aid to help navigation. and storms out. Galileo defends
himself to Sagredo: he needs money for Virginia's dowry, for books
and for food, and his telescope is much better than the Dutch one.
Returning to it, he notices that one of the satellites of Jupiter he has
observed is missing. He and Sagredo observe - there is an interruption
with the stage in darkness to suggest the passing of time - and calcu-
late: Jupiter has no crystal circle and there are no supports in space!
Sagredo is afraid: there is no room for God in space now either, and
trouble is bound to come- especially as Galileo espouses Bruno's heresy
The Life of Galileo 55
that God is within man. Galileo is more optimistic: he defends his
belief in people's reasonableness and thinks that now he has proofs he
can avoid Bruno's fate. To prove that reasonableness is common he calls
in Signora Sarti, who duly confirms that in her experience the small
revolves around the great. Virginia comes on her way to early mass;
Galileo treats her interest in the stars very shortly, but does tell her
he wants to get a job at Florence: there he can have time for research,
and money for the fleshpots. To this end he has - he tells Sagredo -
written a servile letter to the Grand Duke of Florence. The thought of
the monkish intellectual stagnation there is a challenge to him. But
Sagredo remains unconvinced.
Scene 9 [historical events affecting the Papacy, but the experiments were
undertaken earlier, 1611-13]: 'After Eight Years of Silence, the Enthrone-
ment of a New Pope, Himself a Mathematician, Encourages Galileo to
Resume his Researches into the Forbidden Subject of Sun-spots.' Galileo
holds an experimental lecture for Federzoni, the little monk and Andrea
while Virginia and Signora Sarti sew at Virginia's trousseau. Galileo has
written nothing for years. He is sarcastic to Mucius, a former pupil of his
who has condemned Copernican theories when he should have known
The Life of Galileo 57
better. Virginia and Signora Sarti are more interested in the astrological
portents for her marriage. The appearance of a new tract on sunspots inter-
ests Galileo's pupils, but he forces himself to remain silent in fear of the
Church: sunspots involve Copernican theory. They experiment on float-
ing bodies and Galileo shows that a needle can be made to float on
water.
Ludovico comes. Galileo welcomes the interruption and has wine
fetched. Ludovico has news from Rome: the Pope is dying and Barber-
ini, a mathematician, will probably be the next Pope. Galileo shows life
immediately and wants to start investigating sunspots again, deaf to
the warnings of Ludovico and Signora Sarti that Barberini is not yet
Pope and, even when he is, will have to think of keeping the nobility on
his side. Signora Sarti says she knows Galileo has been secretly working
on sunspots for two months, and warns him that Ludovico will drop
Virginia if her father persists in heresy. Galileo, however, is unstoppable
and annoys Ludovico- whom he likes less with every mouthful of wine
(Mat. G., 63f.)- by hinting that he could sow revolt among the peasants.
Ludovico goes without taking leave of Virginia, who is putting on her
wedding gown to show him. Galileo proceeds to his observations of the
sun, as Virginia returns, realises Ludovico is lost, and faints.
Scene 12: 'The Pope.' Pope Urban VIII (Barberini) receives the Inquisitor.
He is inclined to defend the new theories, but the Inquisitor stresses
the consequences of the growth of doubt in terms of social unrest at a
time when the papacy can ill afford it, being involved in religious wars -
on the Protestant side, at that. Galileo will make the heavens subject to
reason rather than God, whilst his machines will destroy the existing
master-servant relationships. If the maritime cities insist on the heretical
star-charts, they will have to have them- but the theories on which the
charts are based must be rejected. The Pope is now persuaded that some-
thing must be done; the Inquisitor strengthens his resolve by pointing
out that Galileo cheated in his book by giving the last word in the dia-
logues to the spokesman of religion as agreed - but making the spokes-
man of religion a fool. Urban agrees to let Galileo be threatened with
torture, which will be enough to make him deny Copernicus.
Scene 13: 'On the 22nd of June, 1633, before the Inquisition, Galileo
Galilei Recants his Teaching about the Movement of the Earth.' Galileo's
pupils .and Virginia wait for the outcome of Galileo's trial. Andrea fears
he will be killed, for he will never recant, and his 'Discorsi' will remain
unwritten. Federzoni is not so sure. Virginia prays. The set time for his
recantation comes and goes and the pupils are glad: but the bell tolls
after all, Virginia is glad, and outside the recantation is read. Andrea is
bitter when Galileo comes, but Galileo, though altered by suffering, re-
mains calm and rejects the idea that he should have showed heroism.
An extract from the 'Discorsi' is read to show that great machines are
more fragile than small ones.
Of our four plays, Galileo relies most on historical fact. Brecht admitted
it might be treated as a conventional costume drama. Some parts of the
text, such as the servile letter to Florence and the formula of recanta-
tion, are taken from the historical sources. 29 But the historical element in,
this sense is only skin-deep. Brecht has no wish to show the past for
its own sake, or to demonstrate timeless patterns of human behaviour
in a strange setting. It is typical that Brecht uses only indirectly (1306;
87; 9; spoken by Andrea) Galileo's best-known statement, eppur si muove,
his muttered denial of the forced recantation; and symptomatic that
72 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
Galileo measures in cubic millimetres (1269; cf. 54, 'a fraction'; 4). The
game of chess, again, had been stabilised since the early sixteenth cen-
tury, and to have the secretaries playing the old game is a considerable
freedom (1284; 68; 7). Similarly Brecht takes liberties with Galileo's
biography and character. He did indeed write in the vernacular for a
wide public, as Brecht mentions {1310; 90; 9); but basically he so'd his
ideas in the dearest market, had only eclectic political ideas, remained
uncomprehended by the masses and put his hopes in the prince, was a
loyal son of the Church tormented by the heretical implications of his
discoveries, was unable to count on any such support from the middle
class as Brecht depicts in the figure of Vanni, and recanted- as was
generally understood at the time - when faced by overwhelming and
growing forces. 80 There is no evidence that he had particularly strong
feelings of living in a new age. He had no opportunity of showing
bravery in the plague in about 1616, since it did not reach Tuscany till
1632.81 The severity of his surveillance in house-arrest is much over-
stated by Brecht; for some time his works were freely sent to Paris
and elsewhere for publication, and the Holy Office did nothing even when
copies appeared in Rome. 82 Brecht does not try to make the major pre-
occupations of the historical Galileo major themes of his play.88 Yet the
alterations he makes to history are less grave than those sanctified by
the past masters of German historical drama- in Schiller, Joan of Arc
dies on the battlefield!
Occasionally Brecht's portrayal of the social situation touches reality:
Galileo's freedom of thought in Venice accompanied by poverty (1241£.;
28f.; 1), a historical reason for his move to Florence; the mercantile
spirit of Venice; the arguments used against Galileo by Aristotelians;
the pleasure-loving life of the high ecclesiastics. But basically, this
version of Galileo's age is meant as a thought-provoking foil to the
twentieth century. Two ways of provoking thought are used: an analogy
between the eras concerned, and an examination of how events of
Galileo's time are only now showing their full consequences.
Historically, the bourgeoisie in seventeenth-century Italy was stagnant
and conservative, the Church in the full flower of the Counter-Reforma-
tion, the nobility gaining in influence. But Brecht depicts a time of social
progress: Church and feudal aristocracy are in decline, desperately hold-
ing on to power, but having increasing difficulty in dealing with each
fresh manifestation of independence of spirit. Whilst still wielding great
power, the Church is bound to the nobility (1708; 88; 9) and thus, in
the long run, condemned to decline. Already it is not monolithic, as differ-
ences between Barberini, Bellarmin and the Inquisitor show. Barberini
hints to Galileo that he does not believe in his religion but sees God as
a social necessity, borrowing the Voltairean statement 'if there were no
God, one would have to invent one' {1290; 72f.; 7). The new science,
The Life of Galileo 73
with the rise of the merchant class, is putting the Church in a false posi-
tion of having to compromise with heresy and allow the new astronomical
charts for navigation (1323; 102; 12), while the dual basis of the papacy
in belief and in politics is leading to a dangerous split, as the Pope allies
himself with the Protestants in the Thirty Years' War to weaken the
Catholic Emperor (1322; 101; 12). A similar gap was discovered in the
bourgeois society of his own day by Brecht. The courts are unwilling,
whatever the legal grounds, to reach judgments interfering with financiers'
return on capital. The rift between codified law and practice is the sign
of an ageing ideology {18, 193f.: Dreigroschenprozess).
In 1938 Brecht was interested in unstable authoritarian societies:
Rome in Caesar's time, where the effort to keep down the slaves in fact
enslaved everyone else, depriving political and financial leaders of in-
itiative (Aj., 11; 23.7.38); and of course Nazi Germany, whose ideology
is in his view secondary to the aim of exploiting the proletariat (Aj., 1.
10; 22.7.38). In the play he constructs a model of such a society: the
prelates are no more free than the peasants and their ideology is only
a means of social domination. The social forces are structured a priori.
His use of the Church to represent the feudal order, and the opposition to
it of science and the rising bourgeoisie, are in line with Engels' presen-
tation of the broad movement of history (Socialism, Utopian and Scien-
tific, Special Introduction to the English Edition of 1892); Engels, wisely,
does not refer to Italy to prove his point. For Brecht the attack on the
Church is a social matter: ' ... it would be highly dangerous, particu-
larly nowadays. to treat a matter like Galileo's fight for freedom of
research as a religious one; for thereby attention would be most un-
happily deflected from present-day reactionary authorities of a totally
unecclesiastical kind' (17, 1111£.; Mat. G., 15; G., 12). In scene 7 Bel-
larmin explains the Church's strategy: to place responsibility for the
horrors of life on a higher Being with a great plan which He is pursuing
through them {1287; 71). A similar divine plan is mentioned in The
Good Person. as being beyond Shen Teh's power to execute. There as
here, religion is to be seen as meaning conservative and oppressive
ideology. The attack on religions goes through all the great plays in
this form, based on Marx's Theses on Feuerbach, IV: the appearance of
an independent religious realm is a sign of something contradictory in
society. Against the external religious realm (heaven) Galileo sets up the
religious realm immanent to man and within the individual's control:
God is 'in us or nowhere' {1255; 41; 3). When he helps the Church in
scene 14, it is not out of belief: 'He merely tries to make his peace
with the powers-that-be' (17, 1132; Mat. G., 36). Therefore, though with
tongue in cheek, he defends charity against social justice, impenetrable
divine wisdom against lay curiosity {1332f.; 111; 14). One is at liberty
74 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
to decide for oneself what powers there are in our century that have
treated serious scientific views as treasonable heresies.
Church and nobility stick together. Cosimo (historically older than
Brecht implies; and by scene 11 Ferdinand II had succeeded, but Brecht
prefers continuity to historicity) passes Galileo on to Rome: first his
ideas to the Jesuits, later (though with some embarrassment) his per-
son to the Inquisition. Ludovico sees two proofs that he and Galileo
cannot inhabit the same social world: Galileo's godlessness, and his will-
ingness to undermine the landowners' position by writing for the masses.
Virginia is doubly involved: a faithful daughter of the Church (perhaps
partly because Galileo does not take her potential interest in the tele-
scope seriously) and betrothed to a member of the nobility. Not by
chance does she oversee his writing to Carpula in the final scene: she
wants him to help the powers-that-be because she believes in their
ideology.
In the first version, where Galileo's fight against the regime is auto-
matically a good thing for the masses, only a rudimentary idea of class
is required. The tiler is more symbolic of the workers than representative
of them; and the noble Ludovico has little more than an episodic function
(the student in scene 1 is one Doppone; Ludovico appears in scene 7).
In the second and third versions the social structure is given much more
attention; Ludovico becomes, largely at the instigation of Charles Laugh-
ton (Aj., 2, 767; 10.12.45), a feudalist in a socially motivated conflict
with Galileo, potential creator of unrest (1309f.; 89f.; 9). The nature of
the unrest is shown in scene 10, where the potential social effect of
ideas which destroy the heavenly hierarchy and man's place in it is
brought out. Many critics find this scene weak because it shows anarchy
and chaos as the consequence of ideas Brecht approve of. This is a super-
ficial reading: except for the farmer who 'kicks the landlord' (1314;
94- the attack with the scythe only appears in the English version; 10),
no one behaves violently in this state of chaos. This anarchy leads to no
brigandage or disorder; it is a state in which man no longer has to ex-
ploit or be cruel to man. Such a state is for Brecht connected with the
future pedecting of Communism, as is best seen in The Caucasian Chalk
Circle. Here it springs directly out of the seventeenth century, as if the
millenium could have been reached without the intervening bourgeois
era and its failings. Brecht short-circuits the history of the proletarian
idea. In history, according to Korsch, 'every revolutionary movement of
the bourgeoisie bred, as an undercurrent, independent stirrings of that
class which was ... the undeveloped predecessor of the modern proletar-
iat.'84 These stirrings here lead straight to Utopia. But the statement
of the potential of equality can only be tentative: in the seventeenth
century, and in Italy above all, the rise of the proletariat is impos-
sible. Only with the Communist Manifesto does the proletariat reach
The Life of Galileo 75
the stage at which it could pursue its interests independently of the
bourgeoisie.
Vanni stands for something historically more definable, the rising
bourgeois class; he shows more dignity than Galileo, is not afraid to
talk loudly in the palace of Medici (1318: 'Ihre Stimme tragt'- 'Your
voice carries'; d. 97, 'Your opinion carries weight'). He wants freedom
in all progressive endeavours, especially money-making (ibid.). He has
more all-round intelligence than any other character, assesses the power-
structure much better than the naive Galileo and sees the connections
of belief, science, technology, individualism and capitalism. Sagredo, of
the same class, is more aware of the dangers of moving too fast- he
finds Galileo's abolition of heaven 'appalling' (1250; 37; 3).
Federzoni represents- from the second version of the play on- the
urban artisan, standing behind science and progress but sent back to the
workshop by Galileo's recantation (1335; 113; 14). Andrea, son of a
servant, starts out as a lowly helper, tidying up at the beginning of
scene 4, before his symbolic fight with Cosimo during which the Ptole-
maic model of the universe is broken: the struggle of Ptolemy and
Copernicus is really the struggle of the Grand Duke and the servant. But
he becomes a teacher; and, as a scientist and the first 'inventive dwarf,
producing knowledge for a world still dominated by its Grand Dukes, he
is implicitly seen as representing the emergent bourgeois' meek accept-
ance of the continuing power of feudalism throughout the bourgeois era
(a historical phenomenon particularly apparent in Germany). As a young
scientist, he is given, instead of an example of the responsible use of the
power bestowed by knowledge, Galileo's recantation to mull over. His
incorrect interpretation of its motives does not equip him to face the
problems which beset the scientist in the new age: for he thinks Galileo
can do no wrong and Galileo recanted on purpose so as to be able to
work on. So he copies Galileo's irresponsibility.
The little monk Fulganzio speaks for the peasantry; but as a priest
he also represents power; as an astronomer, the new strivings. Per-
suaded by Galileo in scene 8 to espouse social commitment, he resolutely
abandons the ecclesiastical order- but has to creep back to it when let
down by Galileo's recantation (1335; 113; 14).
The play follows as its central subject Galileo's work on the Copernican
universe. Each scene adds further to our picture of the scientist and
gives us material evidence to use in coming to a judgment at the end,
when he and Andrea offer explanations of his conduct. Brecht first
occupied himself with the subject in connection with a plan to dramatise
76 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
great trials of world history.M The theme of the social value of a heroic
act, performed or left unperformed, may come from his thought on Joan
Qf Arc- herseH the victim of a great triai.3 6 Just as Shakespeare in his
historical plays imposes on his potentially formless and discursive
material a central subject and theme, and ties in the inevitable episodic
elements, so Brecht discerns patterns in Galileo's life which lend them-
selves to dramatic formation. In the abstract, the procedure displeased
Brecht: 'in formal matters i do not defend the play particularly hard'
(Aj., 2, 747: 30.7.45). He contrasts the play with others, here lumped
together as parables: 'in them ideas are given body, here a material
gives birth to certain ideas' (ibid.). In fact a historical subject is in-
tractable material for demonstrative, model-based theatre. Brecht is
suspicious of its atmosphere, its cosiness.
The repetition structure is the basis of the play. In the second half
(scenes 9-14) the events of the first half (scenes 1-7) are replayed after
an eight-year interval and with a different twist. In scene 1 Galileo
demonstrates the movement of the earth round the sun, in scene 9 the
floating of a needle. In scene 7 his work is condemned, in scene 14 he
himself ruined. 37 Such a structure is a good epic vehicle to show human
nature. Already in the Threepenny Opera Macheath was (almost) ruined,
not by going to a brothel. but by going once too often to the same one.
Here the hero, though his work is once placed on the Index, disregards
the warning and involves himself in a more serious situation. Between
the parallel actions Brecht places scene 8, the conversation with the little
monk, which faces in two directions: it sums up the positive and
socially-orientated aspects of science, Galileo arguing in favour of
technical progress and against the superstitions which keep the peasants
of the Campagna subordinated to the Church and the lords; and it pre-
figures the negative aspects of science, the monk throwing himself on
Galileo's papers heedless of the consequences, just as Galileo is now
to go on with his work regardless. The monk, caught between commit-
ment to the peasant class he springs from and his support of the Church,
which acts to oppress that class, reflects Galileo's dilemma between the
demands of progress and the constraints of the given political situation.
Scene 8, set in Rome and yet in a sense in Florence, provides the ideo-
logical superstructure of the play in the clash of these complex attitudes.
But the action also has another structure in the form of a single arc
of action following Galileo's occupation with Copernican theory from
the 'invention' of the telescope, enabling Copernicus' views to be proved,
through to the completion of the 'Discorsi'. 38 This structure is under-
lined by the parallels between scenes 1 and 14 (which is the last scene,
scenes 5 and 15 never being performed): morning and evening, the bed
made up after the night and the bed prepared ready for night (by
Virginia during the last few sentences, a piece of business arranged by
The Life of Galileo 77
Brecht at one of his last rehearsals 89), the speech welcoming the new age
and that showing how the new age has been and will be a disappoint-
ment. Within this there are correspondences of various scenes: the two
carnivals (scenes 7 and 10) are a study in contrast, and the pure dia-
logue of scene 8 is balanced by the demonstrations and experimentation
of the next scene. 40
The element of dialectics in the play means, at its simplest structural
level, the building of contentual contrasts: of Venice, where Galileo is
free but short of time and money, with Florence, where he has plently
of both but is subject to the Inquisition; between Jesuits and Inquisi-
tion in their attitude to Galileo's findings; between the people's recog-
nition of Galileo and his being cut by the Grand Duke; between Galileo's
courage in the plague and his cowardice faced with torture. Or the re-
appearance of things in different contexts gives a shock of recognition:
Galileo needs instruments for his work of enlightenment, the Church
has instruments of torture. 41
Variation of elements within the play is much stressed. Each gestic
section of scene 1 - dialogue with Andrea, monologue on the new age,
interview with Ludovico, and so on- shows Galileo in a different light:
as the quasi-paternal teacher, the visionary, the academic in need of
extra cash. Brecht is more concerned to keep the dialogue graceful and
memorable than to construct realistic scenes. Thus in scene 2 it is
improbable that Galileo explains his discoveries to Sagredo rather than
giving his attention to his employers, the Venetian magistrates. But this
arrangement shows up some of the inherent contradictions in him and
the society of his age. The great man cheats - the society employing him
practically forces him to, to live decently. He is careless of his employ-
ers; he does not realise they are better employers than the one he is
about to join, the proponent of a social order which his discoveries will
undermine. In an elegant ceremony, all is hypocrisy. Galileo talks of
science and means money. The senators are concerned with food and the
threat of peeping Toms; but in fact love of food is a disturbing character-
istic of Galileo himself, 42 and in the next scene the connection of genius
and sensuality is the theme: both the telescope and the move to Flor-
ence mean to him discoveries, money, the fleshpots. In scene 4 the con-
sequences become clear: he gets what he wants, but not recognition.
In scene 5 his bravery puts Signora Sarti and Andrea in danger - and so
on through a series of demonstrations of attitudes and their conse-
quences. In the recantation scene, Brecht decides to show the attitudes
of Virginia and the pupils, rather than Galileo's own torments- a pro-
cedure which scarcely makes the spectator less involved, but does give
him a wider view of what is going on.
The invariable omission of scenes 5 and 15 in performance alters the
impact of the play. Without the demonstration of Galileo's bravery in the
78 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
plague, the disappointment caused by his cowardice before the Inquisi-
tion is less keen: his actions seem more predictably unheroic. And
without the demonstration of how to smuggle manuscripts across fron-
tiers, one is less likely to indulge in believing that Galileo's work has
positive value after all. In general, the performed text is poorer in dia-
lectical contradictions than the printed one. 43
Motifs hold the levels of the play together. The salient example is
the motif of milk (and cheese). Galileo, in reply to Andrea's message that
the milkman must be paid, takes the opportunity for a lesson in termin-
ology: if he doesn't get his money, the milkman will describe a circle
round the house (1231; 19; 1). Insistence on scientific terms for every-
day phenomena underlines the social theme: science as the means of
mastering the problems of everyday life. That it does not do so directly
is mentioned in scene 4: Jupiter's moons don't cheapen milk, but their
discovery does imply that the man in the street can see much if he
opens his eyes (1270; 54). And at the end, the application of doubt to
astronomical matters is contrasted with the blind belief which keeps
the Roman housewife short of milk (1340; 117f.; 14). The motif of the
unpaid milkman is the occasion for contrasting Galileo, who would rather
buy books (1235; 22; 1), with Signora Sarti, whose first question about
the new age is whether the milkman can be paid (1236; 23; 1): to her
the good opinion of her fellow-citizens is important, and the milkman
stands for them in scene 4 (1262; 47). In scene 15 Andrea puts milk out-
side the door of an old woman shunned by the pious (1343f.; 120f.),
just as in scene 5 Galileo was shunned when an old woman left some
milk at his door (1276, 1278; 60f.). Generosity with milk is also men-
tioned in connection with the she-wolf suckling the founders of Rome -
but today, in the official view, children must pay Rome for their milk
(1286; 69; 7). Myth and business are both part of the general world-
order upheld by Church and feudalists: by Fulganzio's mention of his
parents eating a cheese dish (1294; 76; 8) and by Ludovico's unjustified
complaint that Galileo doesn't appreciate his cheese (1309; 90; 9). The
warder-monk of scene 14 too appreciates cheese, which lures him away
(1335; 113) from spying on Galileo and Andrea. Finally, Galileo turns
the telescope on the Milky Way (1248; 34; 2, and 1253; 39; 3). So the
milk motif contains the whole theme of the play- science and social
justice- and hints of Brecht's hopes for the future of mankind.
(VI) LANGUAGE
Having passed off the telescope in Venice as his own child, which it was
not (perhaps 'stepchild' would come closer to the spirit of Zogling),
Galileo may well be deceiving them now. A scandal involving the Medicis
threatens. The ruling house serves as a particularly elegant reason for not
putting the accusation in so many words; but also the references to it and
to Cosima are put in the hieratic terms which remind one that in defend-
ing the highly complex Ptolemaic universe they are also upholding (with-
out hypocrisy) a highly schematised social order. For them Galileo is
a dubious interloper. 44 Elsewhere Brecht satirises the existing order, most
effectively in the figure of the aged Cardinal, who makes a speech full of
first-person pronouns on Man's place in the universe (1282; 65; 6) before
symbolically collapsing. In the same scene Galileo is attacked with cheap
puns: 'Schwindel im Collegium Romanum' (1279; cf. 63, 'Giddiness')
is either dizziness caused by the earth's spinning or a swindle perpe-
trated by Galileo.
A subtler attack on the language of the established order- so subtle
that it is rarely noticed- is contained in the celebrated argument in
biblical quotations (1286; 69; 7) between Barberini and Galileo. Galileo's
citations are correct, whereas Barberini's are largely made up. Galileo's
'He that withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him' is Proverbs 11,
26; but Barberini is tendentious in his alteration of Proverbs 12, 23 (a
fact clearer in the original where Luther has 'Ein verstandiger Mann
tragt nicht Klugheit zur Schau', making it clear that modesty, not secre-
tiveness, is the virtue aimed at; whereas the New English Bible agrees
with Barberini). So Galileo is better able to quote scripture to his pur-
pose than the Cardinal. 40
80 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
The language of Gaiileo's opponents is generally shown up as in some
way false. He. on the other hand, speaks in terms borrowed from reality,
some of them of the force of proverbs or pithy sayings: 'I know they
call a donkey a horse when they want to sell, and a horse a donkey when
they want to buy' (1256; 42; 3). But all the time he builds them into
rhetorical forms. Around the sentence just quoted are two statements
which define it as a description of 'cunning'. The rest of the speech is given
to 'reason', and consists of three everyday examples of the rational be-
haviour, followed by a two-pronged conclusion: 'they are my hope-
they all listen to reason' (ibid.), a statement of belief about the power
of reason, three statements about the irresistibility of logic for the human
mind- of which the middle one is reinforced by Galileo's typical gesture
of dropping a stone to prove the point: nobody would say it fell upl -
and three general statements of which two exploit a paradox, the 'temp-
tation' (ibid). of a proof (as often in Brecht there is the implication that
to embrace what is good in the long run brings short-term disad-
vantages); whilst the third turns the paradox round and describes thinking
as a pleasure (opening up the whole theme of Galileo's genius and sensu-
ality and their disadvantages). The concrete examples take up about half
the speech, the abstract lessons about half. The examples themselves,
however, are given with careful pedantic or poetic touches. The old
woman gives her mule hay with a 'horny' hand; the sailor gedenkt of the
calms, the child covers his head wenn ihm bewiesen wurde (both poetic
or pretentious turns of phrase, lost in the English) that it may rain.
They are not examples naively taken from the fulness of experience;
they are worked-over, finished products. Similarly his great monologue
in scene 14 is an exercise in chiasmus, the juxtaposition of opposites in
mirror-image form. 46 If such things impress, they also detract from
Gaiileo's social claims. His mentions of artisans and common people are
often more beautiful than true; and this is to be connected with his
failure to recognise his (class) interests at decisive moments: he does
not have genuine feelings of affinity with the lower orders.
There is perhaps empty pedantry in his use of words such as diesbe-
zuglich (1339; 117, 'In this respect'; 14). But some less obtrustive turns
of phrase have philosophical weight, stamping his thought as realistic
in contrast to established dogmas. Thus the demonstrative, introductory
da, followed by forms of the verb sein, echoes Dasein, existence seen
ontologically, and is used (1253f., scene 3) successively to point to reali-
ties which are observable (Jupiter and its moons), and to philosophical
figments which are not (the crystal spheres of Ptolemy). The phrase is
odd: 'Da ist keine Stiitze im Himmel .. .' The English (39f.) 'There is .. .'
cannot give such effects.
Brecht originally used much material from Gaiileo's Discorsi and
steeped himself in Galileo's tone. The reading after scene 13 (1330; 108)
The Life of Galileo 81
gives an idea of this basis: rhetorical, persuasive grouping of concrete
examples leading to a succinct conclusion. But the speeches of Galileo
in the play are much more Brecht, and perhaps also more Laughton, than
Galileo- Laughton's knowledge of the Bible and Shakespeare having been
an important element in the compilation of the second version. When
Galileo is quoted, it is usually in a compressed form and with stress
on the theatrical elements Brecht needs. Andrea reads from the Dis-
corsi: 'My project is to establish an entirely new science dealing with a
very old subject-Motion' (1337; 115; 14). Here Brecht has added the
subjective, energetic start and the repetition of sehr (the 'entirely ...
very' of the English), but about halved the length of the originalY Where-
as the historical Galileo, on the other hand, was prone to emotional out-
bursts in private life. Brecht keeps his language cool. expressing emotion
rather by taciturnity, as when he replies to Signora Sarti's long warning
against working on sunspots in three words whose disregard of all her
arguments implies a deadly insult (1308; 89; 9). Only once, just before
his self-analysis. does he give way: 'Welcome to the gutter .. .' (1339;
117f.; 14). ironically identifying himself with the Jewish fishmonger who
had so little self-respect that in his endeavour to persuade people his
fish was not high he attributed the stench surrounding him to himself.
The Inquisitor is also a rhetorician; his speech in its whole structure,
employment of real and invented quotations. careful construction of
climaxes and use of vulgarity is fitted to the hearer, the Pope- but also
to the audience. When he asks rhetorical questions, we have already heard
the answer from Galileo. Are we to found society on doubt instead of
faith, is it not indifferent how heavenly bodies move, what wonders will
come about through machinery? We know! In each case, put in a different
social perspective, the subject looks different; the spectator is invited to
compare the Inquisitor's arguments with Galileo's. When the Inquisitor
says everyone, even the stable-boys, 'chatters about the phases of Venus'
because of Galileo's bad example (1323; 101; 12), he has said nothing
vulgar: but we remember that Galileo mentions the phases of Venus
in connection with his Priapic poem (1297; 78; 8) and with Virginia's
behind (1307; 87, 'her curves', is euphemistic; 9)- so the Inquisitor is
gently mocked. Also earthy is Federzoni, who turns the lady-in·waiting's
silly remark into a vulgar joke: 'all sorts of things on the Bull' {1268;
53; 4), and cuts through the courtesies of discussion about divine Aris-
totle: 'But the man had no telescope!' (1269; 54; in many editions
erroneously attributed to Galileo). Signora Sarti, finally, is down-to-earth
in her evocation of the churchmen as horse-doctors trying to bring
Galileo round: 'Die hochsten Kardinale haben in dich hineingeredet wie
in ein krankes Ross' (1308; the English. 88f., cannot catch the tone; 9).
82 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
Through Galileo the play has what may be called the gestus of scientific
demonstration. As the play sets out to demonstrate certain truths, so does
he. He drops a stone (1281; 64; 6, etc.) to show that no one can stand
the nonsense of saying it fell up; he makes experiments on stage which
spread the ambiguous aura of wonderment and satisfaction because they
are deceptively simple (1304; 85; 9). Simplicity does not mean ease of
execution. Brecht demands that the actor show particular skill in such
things as floating a needle on water; this is an early work-play. In the
gracefulness of the demonstrations, mind shows its ma.stery over matter
(only to lose it with Galileo's fear of torture). Similar elegance is shown
by the progression of dominant colours in the costumes for various
scenes, arranged for the 1947 production with Laughton- Brecht's first
chance to see in practice some of the ideas on theatre he had worked out
in the previous decade. Joseph Losey's film sticks closely to this scheme
and its reflection of the changing moods of the play: morning tones of
white, yellow and grey for scene 1, Ludovico's deep aristocratic blue,
dark green for the Venetians in scene 2, increasing elegance of silver and
pearl grey in scene 4, scene 6 as a notturno in brown and black, the
two carnivals as high-points of colour and spectacle, and a descent into
dull greys at the end. 48 The paintings of Bruegel the Elder did good
service in suggesting costumes; Brecht was also glad to find visual
evidence that trousers were known in the seventeenth century, so that he
could avoid 'what our age finds dressed-up' (17, 1122; Mat. G., 44).
Settings used by Brecht are cool and matter-of-fact, non-representa-
tional (Brecht was suspicious of anything that might make the atmos-
phere domestic) and dominated by the model of the Galilean universe
(flown) and other pictorial evidence with a Renaissance and technical
flavour. A half-curtain is drawn across the stage between scenes. Laugh-
ton as Galileo, drawn from the body of the stage at the end of scene 4
by the need to follow the courtiers out, stood in front of this curtain,
pondering the appeal to Rome just announced to him, waiting for scene
6 and establishing the connection between the scenes (scene 5 was of
course omitted), playing with the stones he uses to demonstrate the
charms of visual proof (Mat. G., 58). The play depends much on tableaux.
In scene 9, for instance, the dangerous change in the direction of Galileo's
research is made obvious when a carefully arranged grouping (1305; 86,
'All settle round the table', lacks the formality) is destroyed, and revealed
as having been ironic all along, by the setting up of the apparatus for
research on sunspots (1307f.; 87f.), whilst at the same time the social
implications become clear in the quarrel with Ludovico: and at the
moment the mirror is finally adjusted and the image of the sun flares on
The Life of Galileo 83
to the stage, Virginia arrives in the wedding-dress she will never use:
the first victim of Galileo's thirst for truth at all costs (1311; 9lf.). In
scene 12, the robing of the Pope which proceeds through the scene turns
him not only visually but psychologically from the mathematician Bar-
berini into the Pope who must act to defend his Church; but his unhappi-
ness is betrayed by his helpless eyes. Half the point of this scene is
expressed visually and would be lost in a radio performance, a good
example of Brecht's technical concentratedness. 49 For Galileo's self-
analysis in scene 14 Brecht had Virginia and Andrea on either side,
Galileo in the middle: between goose-liver and the Discorsi, sensuality
and science. 50
Brecht favoured the translation of all feelings into actions as a step
towards interpreting psychology in social terms. There are for instance
manifold variations of the act of bowing. reaching in scene 4 from the
ceremonial bow of Andrea and Cosimo at the outset (1263; 47), a prelude
to their fight, through the formal bows with which Cosimo favours his
subjects and dependants (1265; 50), to desperate manifestations of ser-
vility from Galileo as Cosimo leaves. In Berlin, Ekkehard Schall, re-
hearsing the role of Andrea in scene 14, introduced an imitation of
Galileo's bow at the point where he talks about it (1338; 116), thus
making its ridiculousness belatedly even more obvious. 51
Speeches too are to be interpreted in social contexts. When Galileo
demonstrates the satellites of Jupiter to Cosimo and his experts, he is
talking to people who are intelligent, but uninterested if not hostile. He
runs quickly through his introduction (1265; 50): a formal speech, not an
attempt to put facts across. The demonstration of the earth's move-
ment for Andrea in scene 1 too can be played offhand, as an interrup-
tion- albeit a pleasurable one- of Galileo's real work (Mat. G., 51).
Similarly at the beginning of scene 3 Galileo turns away from the tele-
scope and relaxes (G., cover photo), trusting Sagredo to observe and
draw his own conclusions. Laughton kept tense observation of the skies
for when Priuli arrived - so as not to have to look the victim of his
deception in the face (Mat. G., 55). In scene 7 Barberini warns the clerks
not to take down the 'scientific conversation between friends' (1287;
71). But they do carefully record what Galileo was saying at that point:
'the bit where he says that he believes in reason' (1290; 73). Have they
disobeyed the Cardinal in the interests of the Inquisition, or were his
words intended as an indirect warning to Galileo to be more circumspect
where there are spies about?
Eisler's music takes an independent role, attempting to show under-
lying strengths and weaknesses- the self-confidence of the revolutionary
world in scene 10, for instance- rather than to depict individual occas-
ions. The introductory verses to scenes are lightly scored (three boys'
84 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
voices, flute, clarinet, harpsichord) but written in a kind of brutalised
recitative.
Joseph Losey, the director of the American premiere, has also filmed
the play. This mid-Atlantic product has two main weaknesses: astron-
omical material is not put visually (why should we see Sagredo looking
through a telescope and not see what he sees?), and Topol's comic
genius in the title role does not assert itself against rather portentous
and heavy directing. Brecht once intended to film the subject on location
in Italy32 - a promising idea, which could be especially interesting if no
attempt were made to restore the locations to their seventeenth-
century condition.
5 Mother Courage and her Children
The play was written from September to November 1939 in Sweden, the
name and some atmosphere coming from Grimmelshausen's seventeenth-
century novel Die Landstortzerin Courasche, the figure of an indomitable
camp-follower suggested by the poem Lotta Sviird by the Swedish author
Johan Ludvig Runeberg. 1 The first performance was in Zurich on 19 April
1941 with Therese Giehse as Mother Courage and music by Paul Burk-
hard. The music now used was written by Paul Dessau, mainly in 1946.
On 11 January Brecht and Helene Weigel introduced the play to Berlin,
in the Deutsches Theater; on 8 October 1950 Brecht produced it in
Munich, again with Therese Giehse. In 1960 a film was made of the (by
then revised) Berlin production. At the end of his life Brecht wrote a film
script under the same title, which is however for all practical purposes
a different work.
Scene 2: Mother Courage meets her brave son again before Wallhof
Castle. Swedish commander's tent.
(a) 'Mother Courage profiteers with provisions in the Swedish camp',
to the background of cannonfire and with her own humorous sales
talk.
(b) 'In the course of tough bargaining about a capon she makes the
acquaintance of an army cook who is to play a part in her life.' He
prefers to cook stinking beef rather than pay her price for the bird she is
trying to sell.
(c) 'The Swedish commander brings a young soldier into his tent and
honours him for his bravery': with a chaplain, they enter the other part
of the tent and start drinking.
(d) When the young soldier speaks Courage recognises his voice- Eilif.
(e) 'In view of the honouring of Eilif she is able to sell her capon more
dearly': the commander demands food for his party; she trebles the price
of the capon and plucks it for the cook.
(f) Eilif describes to the commander how he carried off a number of
oxen (which will not reach the camp for a day or two). Meanwhile
Mother Courage shows that a stupid general who leads his soldiers into a
bad situation (such as they are in at the moment) demands the virtue
of bravery; well-regulated states demand no virtues from their subjects.
(g) Eilif entertains the commander with the 'Song of the Fishwife and
the Soldier', performing a sword dance to it. At the third verse, Courage
joins in from the kitchen.
(h) Eilif goes in to the kitchen and embraces her. After initial greetings
she boxes his ear for having been too brave and not taken care of him-
self.
Mother Courage and her Children 87
Scene 3: Mother Courage transfers from the Lutheran to the Catholic
camp and loses her honest son Swiss Cheese. Camp with Courage's
wagon.
(a) 'Black market in munitions': Courage buys bullets from an ordnance
officer, to resell to another who has no ammunition left. The officer goes
off accompanied by Swiss Cheese, who has been made regimental pay-
master because he is so honest.
(b) Yvette, the camp prostitute, fallen on hard times because everyone
thinks she is infected, drinks to console herself and sings the 'Fraternisa-
ation Song' describing how she ran away from home following a soldier
for love. But she says she never found him- that was ten years ago,
and now she despairs of going on as a whore: she leaves her hat behind.
Courage warns Kattrin against love with soldiers.
(c) The chaplain and the cook come, and engage in polite political con-
versation and flirtation with Courage at one side of the cart over drinks.
Meanwhile Kattrin struts about, trying Yvette's hat and sexy walk.
(d) The Catholics attack; the cook rushes off through the fire to get
back to the commander, but the chaplain has not the courage, gets
Mother Courage to give him a cloak and stays where he is. A soldier tries
to move a cannon; Courage gets Yvette's things off Kattrin. Yvette re-
turns in delighted anticipation of being occupied by an army that does
not know she is ill. She recovers her hat, but Kattrin hides her boots.
Swiss Cheese runs in with the regimental cashbox, which he refuses to
throw away because it is a trust. Mother Courage rubs ashes on Kattrin's
face to make her unattractive; and runs down the Swedish flag.
(e) 'First lunch in the Catholic camp': three days later. The family eats
anxiously, hoping their rather unconvincing pretence of Catholicism will
hold out and enable them to live well off the enemy as off the friend
previously. There are spies everywhere who would love to discover enemy
aliens. Courage goes with the chaplain, who has a good nose for meat,
to get supplies- in getting ready she finds Yvette's shoes hidden and
berates Kattrin.
(f) Kattrin makes signs, and Swiss Cheese talks, about autumn; then he
lays plans to get back to the regiment with the cashbox. He fails to
understand Kattrin's warning about a spy and goes off with the box.
Kattrin is desperate. Her mother and the chaplain return and gather
from her signs that Swiss Cheese has probably been caught. Indeed he is
arrested and brought on and confronted with the party; but they all
pretend not to know each other. and Swiss Cheese denies having been
running around with a bulge under his shirt. He is taken off.
(g) 'Mother Courage pawns her wagon to a camp whore to raise money
to free Swiss Cheese': the chaplain sings a song about the Passion to
Kattrin. Courage arrives: Swiss Cheese will be killed unless she can
raise some money for the sergeant; perhaps Yvette, who has picked up
88 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
a colonel, will buy the wagon. When the chaplain objects that she would
have nothing to live off, Courage tells Yvette, who arrives with her
ancient beau, that she wants to pawn, not to sell outright. After some
argument Yvette agrees and starts taking an inventory. Mother Courage
thinks if she frees Swiss Cheese he will recover the regimental cash and
she will claim the expenses from it to redeem the wagon.
(h) But Yvette, after going to negotiate with the soldiery, says he has
thrown the cashbox into the river. Faced with loss of the wagon Mother
Courage is forced to lower her offer for Swish Cheese in order to retain
working capital for a fresh start. Yvette goes off with the offer.
(i) The others polish knives and glasses. Yvette returns: the soldiers
insist on the full original amount. But it is too late: drums roll, Swiss
Cheese is condemned. Yvette returns to report his execution and that
the body will be brought for a final test of whether Courage did not
know him after all.
(i) 'Dumb Kattrin comes to her mother's side to await dead Swiss
Cheese.'
(k) 'In order not to betray herself Courage denies her dead son.'
Scene 5: Mother Courage loses four officers' shirts, and dumb Kattrin
finds a baby.
(a) 'After a battle': the wagon is in a ruined village, soldiers stand
around.
(b) 'Courage refuses the chaplain her officers' shirts which he wants to
bandage wounded peasants with': she says she cannot afford to give
anything.
(c) 'Dumb Kattrin threatens her mother', and the chaplain bodily sets
Courage aside to get at the stock he needs.
(d) 'Kattrin saves a baby at the risk of her life' from the ruins, and is
Mother Courage and her Children 89
happy playing with it whilst the rest go about their everyday activities,
arguing and stealing.
Scene 9: The war takes an unfortunate course. For the sake of her
daughter Courage refuses a home.
(a} The cook and Mother Courage are now reduced to begging at a
half-ruined parsonage. The cook has had a letter saying he has inherited
an inn in Utrecht, which both find preferable to following a war which
has devastated the country. Mother Courage puts the proposition to
Kattrin.
(b) But it is a misunderstanding: the cook has no intention of taking on
a dumb, scarred girl in his inn. Courage protests she cannot be left alone.
(c) The cook sings the 'Song of the Vexations of Great Men' in the hope
of earning a bowl of soup: it shows how difficult it is to be virtuous and
survive.
(d) While Courage still argues as they go to get the soup at the door,
Kattrin emerges from the wagon with a bundle, leaves a skirt of her
mother's and a pair of trousers in suggestive proximity, and makes to
steal away.
(e) 'Mother Courage stops Kattrin's flight and goes on alone with her.'
(/) 'The cook goes to Utrecht.'
Each of the children has a virtue in which Mother Courage rests her trust;
each carries it to the point at which it offends the military ethos. Swiss
Cheese is executed because he takes honesty too far in looking after the
Mother Courage and her Children 99
regimental cash; Kattrin is shot down trying to save the children of
Halle; Eilif carries over his bravery from war into peacetime, when it
becomes outlawry and is punished. Each is executed; none dies in battle
or accidentally. It is not the unforeseeable chance which dooms some
combatants to destruction and spares others that claims them, but
military discipline; not the disorder of war, but its order. Each death is
foreseeable, if not actually avoidable. Brecht is not concerned to get
pathetic effects from death on the battlefield; he wants to show that the
killing is no unfortunate accident, but an integral part of the ethos of
war (and thus of capitalism).
But in the context of the gestarium, it is important to be clear what
attitudes one defines as virtuous. Ronald Gray (pp. 130-6) finds Brecht's
guidance here unsatisfactory. Indeed, Mother Courage's views on virtues
in scene 2, and the cook's song in scene 9, are unhelpful and tend appar-
ently to put Kattrin's selflessness on the same level as Eilif's low cun-
ning. But looking at particular extracts out of context and asking whether
Brecht agrees with the speaker takes us only so far. The spectator must
be able to stand above what any or all the figures on stage say, and to
assess the results of the 'virtuous' actions, considering them in relation
to war. Eilif's bravery is only a 'virtue' in that in wartime it furthers
the cause of the right side - which of course begs the question of which
is the right side. With the coming of peace, even the organs of military
discipline quickly repudiate it. Swiss Cheese's honesty, though originally
intended by his mother as a counterweight to his stupidity, is turned
(thanks to that very stupidity) into a similar military virtue, whose sub-
jective aim is to please Swiss Cheese's superiors by faithfully returning
with the cashbox. The beneficiary of these qualities is thus the military
order, the exploiters. And these qualities are inculcated by ideologists
such as the chaplain in order to make people sacrifice themselves for the
rulers. Caesar- the cook's paradigm of boldness in scene 9- is in Brecht's
interpretation (in Mr. Julius Caesar's Business Deals) little more than
an Eilif, who gets his chance of making history when it suits the bankers.
Kattrin's good-heartedness, on the other hand, is a basically humane
urge to help the poor and defenceless. In scene 5 she incurs the odium of
unfilial behaviour to do good. In scene 9 she wants to steal away in
order to allow her mother to be happy with the cook, whilst the mother
in Mother Courage asserts herself touchingly in her refusal to counten-
ance this self-sacrifice. Finally she dies through her selflessness. One
could not imagine the cook so far forgetting the instinct of self-preser-
vation, so one sees his song as hypocritical. He is not virtuous. Yet he
is to be taken seriously. Confused as it may be, his song does point out
that charitable St Martin succeeds merely in bringing both himself and
the beggar to their deaths. It is not far-fetched to point out that Kat-
trin too kills herself and probably does not lessen the total number of
100 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
deaths in the war. So the cook's song makes us think about the theme
in hand and further distinguish between virtue that objectively helps
(as Kattrin and the chaplain did in scene 5) and virtue that defeats
its own ends. Obnoxious as he is, the cook has a little bit of truth on
his side.
And he is in general no warmonger. It is those who make war an
article of faith whose descriptions of virtue are always to be taken
ironically. They are the strong, cynical, unscrupulous. Over against them
the weak represent true, if ineffective, virtue. The epitome of weakness
in this sense is Kattrin. She scarcely counts as a person: dumbness
makes her an animal (1381: cf. 31- 'poor thing'; 3), unreceptive to
ideology and proof against hypocrisy, knowing only concrete dangers
and pleasures. She has no interest in war for profit. Profit is an abstract
to her, except when her mother points out that they have to make
money for her trousseau (1404; 51; 6). And the trousseau is no use to
her without peace, in that Mother Courage 'promised her she'll get a
husband- when it's peace' (1403; 50; 6)- so she is angry when the
chaplain proves that war can go on indefinitely. She is sexually frus-
trated because her mother will not let her, like Yvette, sell her body-
the only form in which love offers itself during war. When, in defending
the goods she associates with a trousseau, she is mutilated so that she
has no further chance of a man, she gives up, loses interest in Yvette's
sexy red shoes (1408; 54; 6)- her mother, conversely thinks it safe
to give her them now, as the scar on her brow will put off any soldier
attracted by the message of the red shoes - and becomes a 'beaten
animal. not without malevolence' (Mat. C., 82). Her face loses its ex-
pressiveness, her body its youthfulness. Yet (one of the contradictions
in character Brecht loves) one reason for her wanting a husband is that
she is 'so mad about children' (1408; 55; 6); this has been demonstrated
at the end of scene 5; it remains in force, and when her weakness for
children becomes stronger than her instinct of self-preservation- what
has she to live for? -she shows the quality of pure goodness. It is typical
of Brecht that such a virtue should proceed from a dialectical develop-
ment of character, if we are to sympathise with it. The good-humour
she shows early in the play- playing a mouth-organ, or discussing the
beauty of autumn with Swiss Cheese- is not goodness. To develop good-
ness she needs to be so maltreated that her own personality is no longer
of importance even to her. Then she shows a decisiveness that proves her
her mother's daughter: when in scene 11 the peasants, who put their
own lives first although they have relatives in the town, have concluded
they can do nothing but pray, she contradicts them by deeds, getting
the drum to warn the town. She has asserted her freedom from person-
al ties (a freedom she did not want) to perform a willed moral act in a
hostile situation. and we are allowed to share her emotions; but the
Mother Courage and her Children 101
delineation of her development so far shows how inadequate these
emotions and her self-sacrifice are when unaccompanied by any inkling
of social mechanisms. When Brecht next shows a girl mad about children,
Grusha in the Chalk Circle, he gives her more social awareness. Togther
with Shen Teh, whose maternal feeling is only part of her general kind-
liness, these two figures make up Brecht's trilogy of caring feminine
characters set in the harsh masculine world of conflict. The real suffering
mother-animal in Mother Courage is Kattrin, and this was the role
written for Helene Weigel (non-speaking so that she could take it in a
planned Swedish production 27 ), though finally immortalised, like that of
Grusha, by Angelika Hurwicz.
Between Kattrin and Courage on a scale of goodness is the chaplain.
Whereas Kattrin forswears war and profit and sacrifices herself. her
mother embraces war and profit and restricts any goodness to her chil-
dren. The chaplain is less adapted to war than Courage, but more com-
promised than Kattrin. His profession, of which he is proud, is to bring
religion and war into harmony. His pseudo-theological justification of
Eilif's brutality is rightly taken by the commander as the work of a
Pharisee (1364; 16; 2). He is servile to the commander, who treats him
as a court jester. His job is to get soldiers into a mood to throw away
their lives for Christ; to be forced to become an odd-job man is an in-
dignity to him (1405£.; 52£.; 6). He is thus cut out for comic treatment.
From scene 3 on he is dependent on Mother Courage. who sometimes
makes him feel it; yet in scene 5 he rises above comedy and is the one
who gets at the shirts for bandages by simply lifting their owner out
of the way (1398; 46), as well as the one who rescues people from the
ruins. But unlike Kattrin he restricts himself to help after the event and
does not interfere in the business of war. He rises to the insight that
guilt in war belongs to those who start wars (1407; 54; 6); he accur-
ately describes Courage as a hyena of the battlefield, a scavenger (1414;
60; 8); he claims to have become a better man and less of a preacher
(1416; 61; 8}- but it is as a clergyman that he accompanies Eilif to
execution {1419; 64; 8}. He may suffer from the war, but he accepts his
role in it. 28
No play of Brecht's uses more paradox and wit- which in keeping with
the subject-matter soon turns into black humour, starting with the
drama tis personae - Swiss Cheese is to earn his name when, in scene 3,
he stops eleven bullets. 29 (As a specially macabre note, the New York
Performance Group production had an interval after this scene and
members of the group served refreshments including Swiss cheese.)
102 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
Paradox enters with the opening dialogue on how war alone brings about
order. For Brecht order is often associated with war and with exploita-
tion. The subject is discussed at greater length in Refugees' Conversa-
tions {14. 1383-91). The dialogue in the play ingeniously confuses man,
beast and vegetable, as Fuegi (pp. 84-7) points out. He also notes that
when the recruiter admires the build of the boys he treats them like
horses or oxen- and indeed they are drawing the wagon. Everyone in the
play is at some stage a draught animal for the wagon of war. The scene
title uses the term abhanden kommen, to get mislaid, of Eilif, as if he
were some piece of lost property. Man is dehumanised in war.
This opening, as Hans Mayer (pp. 107f.) notes, also abandons surface
reality. Presumably middle-ranking soldiers did not talk like this in the
seventeenth century; they will have paid lip-service to official ideologies,
treated war as an evil necessary for religion and truth, even if in fact
they behaved as if they thought war right and natural and used it to
cloak their egoism. But here war presents itself without its mask. A
comic effect arises from socially unacceptable behaviour: we are tempted
to laugh at the soldiers as though they were innocents ignorant of con-
ventions of drawing-room behaviour. But the objective situation over-
takes our laughter. Similarly when in scene 3 the chaplain says the
religious war is 'pleasing unto God'. the cook glosses sarcastically: 'In
one sense it's a war because there's firelaying. putting people to the
sword, and plundering, not to mention a little raping, but it's different
from all other wars because it's a war of religion' (1373; 24, but I have
altered the translation). By leaving God out. he reduces war to the level
of this world. on which the definition religious war is meaningless; his
treating rape as scarcely worth mention is a touch of black humour. But
the same cook, in scene 8, when peace seems to be going badly for him,
will produce the ranting religious tone (1418; 63). Attitudes to religion
are a matter of circumstance, not of character.
From Mother Courage's first appearance, the exploitation of the
humorous gap between the semblance of logic and the seamy side of
reality becomes a standing feature of the play. She produces a whole
missal (1351; cf. 5- 'Bible'; 1). but quickly explains that it is for wrap-
ping cucumbers in. This comic discrepancy is a wry reference on a small
scale to the ideology of war: religion is the ostensible matter at stake,
but more tangible things really occupy everyone. The ridiculous descrip-
tion of her family with which Courage confuses the soldiers is a prime
example of the Bavarian humour Brecht learnt from Karl Valentin. which
is turned to serious use later with such statements as that the Poles in
Poland should not have interfered in their own affairs, or her reaction
to the chaplain's 'We're in God's hands now!'- 'I hope we're not as
desperate as that .. .' (1378; 29; 3). Hasek's Schweyk is also a model for
such humour (Aj., 1, 172: 19.9.40). Zeugma too has a tendentious effect,
Mother Courage and her Children 103
in 'Do you know what we need in the army? Discipline!'- 'I was going
to say sausages' (1352; 6; 1). The description of the Fierling-Noyocki-
Haupt family, incidentally, anticipates a theme of The Caucasian Chalk
Circle, in that Swiss Cheese is described as taking after the Hungarian to
whom he owes the name Feyos, who didn't mind him but was not his
father (1353; 7). Heredity is of less importance in determining his hon-
esty than a sort of imprinting from the honest Hungarian. Similarly
Grusha will set out to make the Governor's son into a worker by force
of example and education.
Not only comic dialogue, but also lack of dialogue, is used to good
effect in the play. In scene 10 two figures appear on the stage, but remain
silent and do not express their feelings by gestures either. 'What is going
on in them is not to be shown; the audience can think it out for itself'
(Mat. C., 65). And one major character is dumb. Brecht uses various
theatrical techniques to allow her to be understood: her gestures, her
irrepressible activity where it is a matter of children or sex. The sounds
she makes are also meaningful; the actress should in rehearsal first put
in words what Kattrin is trying to say, then gradually reduce it to the
inadequate word-substitutes of the mute (Mat. C., 106f.). But there are
also literary ways of dealing with the problem of comprehending her: com-
ments on her by her mother. 30 What Mother Courage says about Kattrin
turns out to be true: 'you have a good heart' (1358; 11; 1); 'The war
frightens her' (1424; 69; 9). In a sense Mother Courage acts as her in-
terpreter, though she has to admit there are limits even to her under-
standing of her daughter (1408; 55; 6). She also interprets the boys, not
letting them speak for themselves. In scene 1, where she is trying to keep
the recruiting officer away from them, this is particularly obvious. Some-
times what she says is obviously untrue, but at other times she functions
as a narrator, reminding the audience of what has already been said in
dialogue (1369; 21; 3- Swiss Cheese's honesty). Thus she imposes her-
self as a central figure, but also to some extent (giving up her own char-
acter) as a commentator and mediator between stage and audience. She in
turn is the object of expositionary comments by others: Swiss Cheese
explains, when in the heat of argument she has no time to, 'She can look
into the future. Everyone says so' (1356; 9; 1). The descriptive note thus
given to the play is an epic element.
Difficulties of communication affect others besides Kattrin. The cook,
a Dutchman, was endowed by Ernst Busch (Berlin 1951) with a practi-
cally incomprehensible Dutch accent. A strong South German tinge is
suggested for Mother Courage and the boys by textual features: muta-
tions diverge from standard German (missing or introduced Umlaut),
final -e is elided, a redundant -s added to plural verb forms- 'Nehmts
mich mit' (1438; 12)- the conjunction 'vor' used instead of 'bevor',
'nix' and 'bissel' preferred to 'nichts' and 'bisschen', the interpolated
104 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
'halt' frequent, ambiguous forms of 'mogen' substituted for the flat-
footed future tense. Brecht also encouraged actors to use their native
dialects in rehearsal. 31 Furthermore, the syntax is broken up, word-
order and agreement often unconventional and expressive: 'Die zahlen
nicht, warum, die haben nix' (1397; cf. 45, 'They have nothing and they
pay nothing'; 5). Such sentences expressing reasons are particularly
prone to this emphasis- Brecht, as always, stressing logic and decision-
making, even if their processes go sadly wrong in Courage's case; her
wrongness is expressed by false logic in little comic interpolations: 'I
call him Swiss Cheese. Why? Because he's good at pulling wagons' (1353;
7; 1).32
Dialect serves Brecht as a way to shake the rigidity of the standard-
ised diction. Buhnendeutsch, of which the German stage used to be
proud (16, 731: Aus einem Brief an einen Schauspieler), and which
he thought bloodless, 'a thin shorthand without undertones or over-
tones' (Aj., 2, 916: 5.3.50). The seventeenth-century setting also comes
to his aid. Eisler (p. 57) remarks of Brecht's language that he starts
not from Lessing or Goethe, but from Luther. Luther's Bible and Grim-
melshausen's novels of the Thirty Years War period represent for Brecht
a stage at which German is unified - Luther had written his Bible in
the dialect of German which would be most readily understandable over
a wide area- but not forced into all-too-decorous standardisation, still
earthy and direct. Some archaisms ('allewege' and 'allhier') are taken
from Grimmelshausen; occasionally the Bible is quoted, usually against
the grain, as when the chaplain refuses to risk going through enemy
fire and says 'Blessed are the peacemakers' (1376; 26; 3)- not a text
he would choose for one of his pre-battle sermons. The German
language's stock of proverbs is drawn on particularly in the 'Song of
the Great Capitulation', both to spice the argument and- in accordance
with the tendency of the scene - to be held up as false wisdom. 'Der
Mensch denkt: Gott lenkt- I Keine Red davon!' (1395; not trans-
lated; 4) alters the sense of the original ('Man proposes, God disposes')
radically ('Man thinks God is in charge') by changing the usual punctu-
ation, then demolishes the proverb's and religion's claims by straight
negation. 33
Brecht likes to change the level of language too. 'Unhappy mother
that I am, rich only in a mother's sorrows! He dies. In the springtime
of his life, he must go. If he's a soldier, he must bite the dust, that's
clear' (1357; 10; 1- the German echoes Goethe's Faust before reach-
ing the Western imagery). There is no attempt to reproduce outer reality
or to write within a convention; a sort of comic inconsequentiality is
aimed at. At one point Brecht intended the opening dialogue to be in
Knittelvers, a doggerel-like rhymed form with irregular rhythm which
flowered in the sixteenth century and gives the modem ear an impres-
Mother Courage and her Children 105
sion of naive clumsiness. 34 Perhaps this struck him finally as too comic
for the serious subject: the contentual paradoxes make their mark with-
out help from verse form.
The 1949 Berlin production, taken into the Berliner Ensemble repertoire,
reached 405 performances. Each scene is introduced by summaries or com-
mentaries projected on to a half-curtain. These texts anticipate the action
or the gestus of the scene and may also provide historical information
not found in the dialogue. That for scene 1 supplies the thought that
Eilif is only one of many men being recruited; that for scene 5 connects
Mother Courage's journeyings with the course of the war. 39 As in-
scriptions. the scene headings speak as it were over the head of the
dialogic and scenic presentation straight to the audience's intelligence,
and put across the scale of the war - which the stage could not convey
directly- and the lessons of the play. In scene 6 the title scarcely goes
beyond the content of the scene, for here Courage is allowed to put the
moral in words: 'Curse the war!' (1408; 55); but in all the following
scenes, when she has forgotten that flash of insight, the headings insist
ironically on the destructiveness of war.
The stage is bare at beginning and end. From nothing Mother Courage's
mercantile enterprises start; in nothing they end. The ground-tone of the
production is drab, and Wekwerth (pp. 279£.) dates from it the 'grey
period' of Brecht-theatre, a stage at which Brecht attempts to shock by
the painful contrast with the colourful. empty spectacles provided by
Nazism: hard-bitten sobriety against perverted belief and daemonic
intoxication. The wagon enters- 'a hybrid of military vehicle and market
stall' (Mat. C., 17). almost an actor in its own right: now smartly
painted and festooned with wares, later shabby and empty; now pulled on
by two strong youths, eventually pulled off by the owner alone. Its single
shaft has a crossbar near the front, which those pulling the wagon hold
to steer. Fuegi (pp. 88-90) draws attention to the symbolic cross thus
formed, which is of visual significance at various points of the action.
Perhaps he over-interprets; but certainly when Kattrin prepares to leave
her mother free to go with the cook, the raised shaft forms a cross
dominating the display of trousers and skirt and corresponding to the
crucifix specified in the setting for the scene - whose theme is virtue,
claimed and real. So the subject of Christianity's relationship with war
and commerce is, literally, never lost sight of. The wagon moves mainly
round the outer edge of the stage turntable; such trips are established
in the course of the play as showing the covering of ever greater dis-
tances, so that at the end a circuit of the stage, ending with the wagon
upstage and about to start a second circuit, signifies the indefinite pro-
longation of Courage's wanderings. 40 Another speaking prop is the drum
which is among the goods for which Kattrin suffers her wound in scene
6; it awakes the town of Halle in scene 11, and in an early production
108 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
in Rotterdam was the only item of stock hanging from the wagon as
Courage departs in scene 12 (Mat. C., 110) -a touch of masterly irony
thought up by Ruth Berlau.
For the songs a flown 'music emblem', an illuminated swag of seven-
teenth-century musical and martial attributes, is displayed. Whereas every-
thing practical- props, the roof for Kattrin's death- is realistic and
heavy, the guns perhaps real museum pieces, what is not to be used-
drops representing housefronts and so on- is merely sketched with atten-
tion to line but no claim to realism. A few tufts of grass signify a road-
side. Courage has on her the attributes of her profession, notably the
short knife with which she discourages attackers; the cook too shows
his calling by a knife, Yvette hers with large hat and red boots; whilst
the costume designer Kurt Palm had the idea of dressing Eilif shabbily
at first, but in costly black armour by the time he is executed: he has
enriched himself in war, but pays with his life (16, 768: Palm). The
chaplain wears an exaggerated Roman nose. Costumes are drab and un-
differentiated, warm and practical clothing which has seen too much use.
The play is carefully analysed into small gestic units. In scene 2 a
basic gestus of 'profiteering with food' (Aj., 1, 206: 9.12.40), cut across
by joy at Eilif's appearance, soon swings back as she raises the price
of the capon: everything she touches becomes mercantile, her reaction
to an event shows her attitudes. But directer characterisation is used too.
In scene 1 Swiss Cheese, ineffectual and simple as he is, is trying to look
warlike; Eilif too would obviously rather fight than pull the cart. What
their mother does in scene 1 is a reaction to their wish to join up -
although Swiss Cheese never puts it in words. Nor is Kattrin purely happy
- even at the beginning she does not intend to spend her life sitting
on her mother's cart. Mother Courage's jauntiness is matter for a grin,
rather than a smile: something is discordant inside her too. The happy
family is full of tensions even before the dialogue beginsY
Each gestic section is the basis for a grouping of figures on stage,
usually in an obvious manner: opponents opposite one another, allies
side by side. But the cook and chaplain, when they argue, may face away
from each other. 42 The wagon is often used to divide the stage, as in scene
1, where Courage moves away from Eilif and busies herself at one side of
it, whilst the recruiting officer strikes his bargain with Eilif on the other
side. Her movement turns out to have been symbolic of her whole
erroneous attitude: neglecting her children's true interests for the sake
of business. 43 No one moves on stage without a reason; at the begin-
ning, for example, sergeant and recruiting officer stay together at one
side of the stage until the wagon appears. After such a static period as
the beginning of scene 3, with Mother Courage unhurriedly mending
Swiss Cheese's underpants- she is scarcely ever idle- and chatting com-
fortably with Yvette at the cask which serves as a table, then taking
Mother Courage and her Children 109
her visitor over to the other side of the wagon for a political talk, the
panic at the sudden attack when she rushes from one side of the stage
to the other in her haste to pack up and escape is all the more impres-
sive. Not that she has lost her head; Weigel gives a virtuoso perform-
ance of lightning packing- Mother Courage is used to alarms. And the
public according to Brecht has come to the theatre- inter alia- to see
familiar actions performed with unwonted skill. Meanwhile, as everyone
rushes about, the chaplain stands still and is in everyone's way: one of
the gratuitous comic effects Brecht the director loves (Mat. C., 34). Also
dependent on movement effects is scene 5, where Mother Courage drinks
to keep her spirits up, thus motivating her bad-tempered, tigerish activity
during the scene, from defence of the cart and its contents against the
chaplain and Kattrin, to the counter-attack on the thieving soldier. Having
sacrificed Swiss Cheese to the wagon in scene 3, she has become more
attached to it and to money- it was because she could not be open-
handed with money that she could not save him. The chaplain's move-
ments are, as always when he has something physical to do, clumsy; and
opposing the woman who after all feeds him is difficult; yet he has a
certain residual dignity, that of the clergyman giving a moral lead (Mat.
C., 48). Another instance of clumsiness is Eilif's sword dance in scene
2, taken with an appearance of strain and over-concentration as if he
had difficulty in remembering the steps; this particular martial art does
not come easy to him. In general, however, any point of the text where
business is indicated is an occasion for graceful movement or skilful
technique. In scene 2 the cook fishes mouldy meat out of the rubbish and
carries it to his chopping-board ceremoniously on the point of a knife;
and he prepares the capon with a dash, to impress his new lady-friend
(Mat. C., 29).
Much business can be added to elucidate the interworkings of society
and character. Thus in scene 6 Mother Courage's speech on Tilly is easier
to deliver if she is being watched by the scrivener, on the watch for
subversive statements she does not quite make (Mat. C., 52£.). Weigel
added the aside 'Lord, worms have got into the biscuits' (not in the
German text, but Mat. C., 53: 'Jesses, in den Zwieback sind mir die
Wiirmer gekommen'; 48) and laughed at it, thus freeing the amusement
she felt at teasing the scrivener (a rare borrowing by Brecht of an idea
from Freud). The soldier's song following is accompanied by a little
flirtation with Kattrin - the last reminder before her mutilation of her
potential for love (Mat. C., 53). The chaplain's role in this scene was
greatly built up in the 1951 reprise of the Berlin production. After losing
money gaming with the scrivener, he is sad, and tries to improve his
finances by rubbing a chalk mark off hi.s debt record on Courage's slate;
then he sees how unworthy this is, prays silently, and is thus prepared
to make himself popular with her by woodcutting - the closer their rela-
110 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
tions, the less she will remember his debts. But he drags the axe to the
block and works with as little effort as possible, emphasising that he still
sees himself as an intellectual, misused as a manual worker. 44 Courage,
prosperous in this scene, is a little softer; he is encouraged to propose
marriage, but she prefers a helper under her control to a husband. She
also speaks more warmly than she need of the cook; so when the latter
arrives in scene 8, though he and she only talk of ruin, we hear the affec-
tion between the lines better (Mat. C., 58). Kattrin, hurt in scene 6, is
bandaged in scene 7. In scene 8 the scar is shown, and when the cook
sees her he is taken aback for a moment; in scene 9 the scar makes him
decide not to offer her a home in Utrecht. 46
In accordance with Brecht's requirements of reading the text against
the grain, some parts of the dialogue can be undermined by reinterpre-
tation. The commander in scene 2 for instance will stand playing as an
absent-minded, effete aristocrat who goes without any conviction through
the routine of praising one of his soldiers and talking like a regular fellow
(Mat. C., 30). Such an interpretation strengthens the theme of social
class, not overtly developed in the text in this play. And Wekwerth notes
disarmingly that in the 1951 revision they discovered that Eilif's similar-
ity to the king, mentioned by the commander (1365; 17), is supposed to
consist of a liking for drink! So they gave him something bigger to drink
from (Mat. C., 115). Some speeches which are likely to arouse the spec-
tator's sympathy are given in super-cooled style: the peasants of scene
11 plead for their animals to be spared in the tone of people to whom
such crises are familiar, who have a form of words ready. Such threats
of destruction have become the norm. 'It pays to give up the "direct
impression" of the apparently unique, real horror, in order to reach
deeper layers of terror where frequent ever-recurring misfortune has
already forced people into making their gestures of self-defence a cere-
monial- which yet can never help them to avoid the actual real fear'
(Mat. C., 70). Absence of dialogue is taken as a hint. In scene 11 there
is a point where the soldiers stop making suggestions as to how to stop
Kattrin, and there may be some satisfaction in the first soldier's closing
line, 'She did it' (1436; 80). In between, the soldiers can show apathy
or bloody-mindedness, carry out orders only just fast enough to avoid
disciplinary action, and grin behind the officer's back (Mat. C., 73).
Tempo is in general not forced. Details are to be taken one at a time,
Brecht stresses (Mat. C., 25). Helene Weigel after each monetary trans-
action closed her leather purse with an audible snap before proceeding.
Running time is about 168 minutes, plus scene changes of never more
than two minutes and a single interval after scene 7.
After Weigel in Berlin, Brecht directed Therese Giehse in the part of
Mother Courage in Munich in 1950. Giehse's ideas included an ill-
tempered reception for Eilif in scene 2 even before the slap; in the
Mother Courage and her Children 111
scene over Swiss Cheese's body, on the other hand, she preferred a
direct change of mood, inspecting the corpse as if insulted by the idea
she might have known such a criminal, then suddenly collapsing for-
wards from her stool after it was carried out. In scene 7 she staggered
and swung a bottle, so that drunkenness would forestall any empathy
with her view on war expressed here. In scene 9 -where Weigel intro-
duced the idea of feeding Kattrin the soup she brings (1428; 72) with a
spoon - Giehse also returned the soup-dish to the parsonage with deep
bowings and scrapings which show how far down the social scale she
has sunk- and also how old and stiff she is getting, too old to refuse
easily the cook's offer of a home. 46 Weigel took this up. In the same
episode Giehse's treatment of the word 'wagon' showed that she was
trying to avoid making Kattrin grateful to her. Yet at the end when
Courage has thrown the cook's things out of the wagon, both Weigel
and Giehse reached out for Kattrin's bundle to put into the wagon:
Giehse with obvious tenderness, but Weigel this time disguising her
love of Kattrin behind a show of impatience. 47 A good example of differ-
ing interpretations not interfering with the dramatic function of an
episode is afforded by the beginning of scene 3: Weigel gestures to
Swiss Cheese not to listen to her illegal dealings with the officer, then
tells him to be honest; Giehse allows Swiss Cheese to listen to the talk
despite the officer's misgivings, then tells him to be honest! (16, 754:
Uber den Cestus).
In the Berliner Ensemble, three young actresses were faced with the
task of playing old women: Carola Braunbock as the peasant woman in
scenes 11 and 12, Regine Lutz as Yvette, Kathe Reichel as the old woman
in scene 8. In each case Brecht declares against stock characterisations
of age by voice and movement, and insists that the individual mode of
the character's ageing be analysed. The peasant woman, about forty, is
aged by miscarriages and the loss of children, physical maltreatment by
parents and husband, spiritual brutalisation by pastors, and the neces-
sity of taking up servile attitudes in order to survive in wartime. Thus
she kneels to pray carefully, one knee at a time, and she prays in a
practised and formal manner, at the same time trying to involve Kat-
trin, who seems to her to have been brought up in irreligious ideas;
by this and by the fact that, despite her life-weariness, the fate of her
relatives in the town does in fact touch her, she seems to become more
sincere as the prayer goes on. Yvette ages in a more comfortable man-
ner, deformed by the twin pleasures she can indulge in as the wife of an
ancient colonel: eating and giving orders. She comes on padded and
powdered and snaps with stupid arrogance, the corners of her mouth
turned down. yet still has remnants of charm. The woman in scene 8
is less characterised by the text: the interpretation chosen was to make
her appear turned in on herself, unable immediately to take in the mean-
112 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
ing and importance of the news of peace: she cups her ear with her hand
as if mentally deaf (Mat. C., 70-2).
The play has supported many divergent interpretations. One, strange
to thl! European eye, is a thoroughgoing adaptation by Nick Wilkinson,
set in Africa and suited to local ideas of performance, which made some
of the audience think afresh about the Biafran war. 48 Another radical
departure is a New York Performance Group production: the play was
chosen mainly to provide the group with rewarding female roles. With
apparently unconscious Brechtianism Joan Macintosh (Mother Courage)
says 'I'm obviously not 50 years old, so there was no way to act that I
was 50, or to pretend that I was a mother. I did not want to get into
acting old age. I decided it would have to be me the performer, telling
the story about this other person.' The part of the commander was also
taken in a similar spirit by a woman. Perhaps further from Brecht was
the repeated use of a system of pulleys and harness for representing the
deaths of Swiss Cheese and Kattrin by dropping them violently to the
ground: it threatens the takeover of technology, a mistake Brecht saw
in Piscator's work. The decision to dispense with a movable wagon also
limits the possible effects. An interesting final touch: Courage strips
the clothing off her dead daughter before leaving to take up business
again. 49
6 The Good Person of Szechwan
Brecht started work on the play in Denmark in March 1939 on the basis
of an earlier. sketch Die Ware Liebe (1930}, but stopped in Sweden in
September. Completed in Finland, May-August 1940, the play was worked
over again in January 1941. 'it gave me more trouble than any other play
ever did' (Aj .• 1. 120: 29.6.40). The first performance was in Zurich on
4 February 1943. Music by Paul Dessau was written in 1947-8 and first
used in an American performance in 1948.1 The Berliner Ensemble pro-
duction by Benno Besson with Katrin Reichel in the lead opened on
5 October 1957.
Interlude: Under a bridge. The gods appear to Wang in a dream and ask
him to watch the progress of Shen Teh's charity while they are looking
elsewhere for more good people.
Scene 3: 'The Good Person, looking for one to help her, finds one
whom she can help.' Evening in a public park. Two prostitutes are waiting,
without much hope in view of the rainy weather, for customers, as Shen
Teh passes through on the way to meet a widower whom she hopes to
marry. She notices Yang Sun, a trained pilot who is looking for some-
where to hang himself because he cannot find a flying job. She stays with
him in order to stop his suicide, the immediate cause of which she sees
in the bad weather - the last straw to one who is so miserable. As her
sentimentality leads quickly to tears, it is soon unclear who is trying
to cheer whom up. They like each other. Shen Teh shows her good mood
by buying water from Wang although it is raining and she could have it
free.
Scene 4: 'Unfortunately only the cousin can help the beloved.' Square
in front of Shen Teh's shop. Shen Teh's neighbour, the stout barber Shu
Fu, chases Wang- whose water-vending he finds importunate- out of his
salon and hits him over the hand with a pair of curling tongs. Mrs Shin
and others, who are waiting for Shen Teh- who has been out all night-
commiserate. Shen Teh arrives with a lyrical monologue on the beauties
of the town in the morning, and goes into a neighbouring carpet shop
to buy a shawl. Shu Fu admires her beauty. Shen Teh discusses with the
old couple who own the carpet shop the necessity of raising a half-year's
rent; for the man she loves has no capital. The wife offers to lend her
the money, since they are favourably impressed by her charitableness. But
when Shen Teh comes across and has Wang's injured hand pointed out to
her, her happiness is dissipated. Everybody present agrees that Wang can
sue Shu Fu for damages, but none of them want anything to do with the
courts as witnesses. Such lack of solidarity shocks Shen Teh, who deter-
mines to go to court herself and say she saw the incident, rather than
leave Wang in the lurch.
Mrs Yang, Sun's mother, runs up. Sun has the chance of a job in Peking
but needs 500 dollars to clinch it. Shen Teh, clear that a pilot must be
116 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
given the chance to fly. immediately hands over the 200 dollars the old
couple have given her, and decides she will have to call on Shui Ta again
to raise the rest.
Interlude: Shen Teh dresses as Shui Ta whilst singing the 'Song of the
Defencelessness of the Good and the Gods'.
Scene 5: 'But the cousin discovers the badness of the beloved. This.
admittedly, does nothing to help the woman in love.' The tobacconist's.
Shui Ta is reading the paper and not listening to Mrs Shin's attempts
to marry Shen Teh off to Shu Fu. Sun arrives to see about his 300 dollars;
Shui Ta is cool and asks what the 500 dollars are needed for. Sun ex-
plains he has to induce the superintendent to find a pretext to sack a
good pilot. Shui Ta objects that the man could then sell Sun in the same
way in a short time; and the proposal means selling the shop. Sun should
rather run the shop - a proposal the pilot treats with scorn. Mrs Mi Tzu
comes and they try to sell the shop to her- Sun for 300 dollars, Shui Ta
for 500 so that he can repay the old couple. But as there is no written
agreement with them, Shui Ta is soon persuaded to come down to 300,
and provisional agreement is reached. There is however no spare money
for the expenses of a move to Peking, and it comes out that Sun intends
to go to Peking alone and leave the girl behind to fend for herself. Shui
Ta thereon claims the 200 dollars back and says Shen Teh will doubtless
not want to sell her shop on those terms. Sun disagrees: Shen Teh loves
him to distraction and will not listen to Shui Ta's reasonings. After he
has gone Shui Ta rants about the power of love which destroys all one's
ambitions. Mrs Shin thinks the time ripe for Shu Fu's courtship and brings
him. Shui Ta explains to him that Shen Teh has thrown away 200 dollars
in one day and the shop is on the brink of ruin. Shu Fu expresses his
readiness to help Shen Teh's charitable actions, for instance by lending
her empty houses to shelter the homeless in. Wang arrives with the
policeman, looking for his witness; Shui Ta gives him Shen Teh's new
shawl as a sling for his arm, but says Shen Teh did not witness the in-
cident and has too many troubles of her own to be able to start fresh
ones by perjuring herself for Wang; nor will Shui Ta do anything against
Shu Fu. Wang has to retreat, Shui Ta agrees to get Shen Teh to meet
Shu Fu for a discreet meal, and goes into the back room. Shu Fu con-
gratulates himself on his tact and generosity, and writes off Sun as a
rival of no account. Sun returns wanting to know what is going on, but
Shu Fu stops him going into the inner room where Shui Ta and Shen Teh
are talking. Shen Teh emerges and confirms that she espouses Shui Ta's
ideas. Sun however exerts himself. his fascination takes hold and Shen
Teh goes off with him.
The Good Person of Szechwan 117
Interlude: Shen Teh on her way to her wedding with Sun hopes that
what Sun said to Shui Ta was merely masculine boastfulness, and that
she will be able to persuade Sun to give up his aeronautical ambitions
and return the 200 dollars to the old couple, whom she had forgotten in
the excitement of the previous scene and who are now worried about the
safety of their money.
Scene 6: 'Where Shen Teh goes, Shui Ta cannot go.' Private room in a
cheap suburban restaurant. The wedding party is ready to begin, except
that Sun will not proceed because Shen Teh refuses to sell the shop for
him because of the 200 dollar debt. He has sent for Shui Ta to make it
clear to Shen Teh that if she holds out the creditors will seize the shop
anyway, so she would be better advised at least to sell it and secure
his job with the proceeds. Shen Teh remains unaware of this hitch. Sun
tries to pass the time with jokes, while the priest gets impatient. Mrs
Yang too is worried because the little wine they have ordered is running
out. Eventually they tell Shen Teh they are waiting for Shui Ta, and she
realises it is because of the 300 dollars; but Sun refuses to talk business
with her, he insists on seeing Shui Ta. Shen Teh says he cannot come.
Sun on the other hand is convinced he will and will bring the money.
Shen Teh says he will not, because he thinks Sun is going to abandon
her. Sun shows her two pieces of paper- two tickets to Peking! Shen
Teh is very tempted to throw caution to the winds, but still remembers
that if she completes the 500 for the job it can only be by robbing the
old couple - to say nothing of an innocent pilot in Peking who has to
lose his job. The guests are by now all aware that something is wrong;
the priest goes and the guests follow. Sun sees his ambitions thwarted.
Scene 7: 'To help Shen Teh's little son, Shui Ta has to sacrifice the little
sons of many people.' Yard behind Shen Teh's shop. Shen Teh faces ruin,
as to raise the old couple's money she has to sell out to Mrs Mi Tzu. But
Shu Fu arrives, incapable of standing by while her charity comes to such an
end, and gives her a blank cheque. Mrs. Shin finds this marvellous, but Shen
Teh has no intention of accepting the money. She is pregnant by Sun.
In a dramatic monologue she imagines herself with a growing son, a
budding aviator and cherry-thief. Wang comes with a little boy, a waif
whom he hopes Shen Teh will do something for. Shen Teh thinks of Shu
Fu's empty premises. Wang's hand is useless; she gives him things to sell
118 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
so that he can go to a doctor. Mrs Shin is annoyed that Shen Teh gives
away the little she has left. Two of the parasitical family arrive with bales
of tobacco they have stolen; they want Shen Teh to take care of them
until the police lose the scent, then they want to start a little factory.
Shen Teh agrees and they put the bales in the inner room. The orphan
meanwhile fishes in the rubbish for something to eat; Sben Teh vows
her son shall not have to do that, however hard she has to be to others
to guarantee it. She decides to turn into Shui Ta, she hopes for the last
time; Mrs Shin sees her going into the inner room and suspects what is
going on. Parasites gather, all hoping she will call Shui Ta and save the
shop so that they can start living off her again. Shui Ta emerges with
plans: they can all live in Shu Fu's warehouses and work- utilising the
tobacco Shen Teh has in the inner room. The shop will be kept, the rent
being paid by filling in Shu Fu's cheque for 10,000 dollars. The parasites
accept their fate with ill grace, the old couple and Wang are disappointed
at Shen Teh's disappearance.
Interlude: Wang reports to the gods that Shen Teh is unable to bear the
burden of so many commandments; but they do not agree with his sug-
gestions for reducing it.
Scene 8: 'What Shen Teh has promised is kept by Shui Ta.' Shui Ta's
tobacco factory. In Shu Fu's premises a number of poor families, very
crowded, are working. Mrs Yang comes to the front of the stage to report
how Sun has got on in Shui Ta's factory. The episodes of this story are
dramatised. First Mrs Yang goes to see Shui Ta, who had filed a writ
alleging breach of promise and fraud to the extent of 200 dollars. Sun has
of course spent the money. Shui Ta offers him the chance to pay it off
by working in the new tobacco factory. Soon Sun distinguishes himself
in Shui Ta's eyes by carrying three bales of tobacco at once to help
an aged colleague; Shui Ta sees this and orders the old worker too to
take three. On pay day Sun refuses a day's pay which is credited to him
by the foreman- who likes to make mistakes in the pay for the employ-
ees' benefit. Shui Ta thus becomes aware of this deception and Sun gets
the foreman's job. Instead of rising literally as a pilot, he rises in his
career on the earth, by insisting on hard work from all.
Scene 9: 'Has Shui Ta murdered his cousin Shen Teh?' Shen Teh's shop,
now a counting-house. The old couple have had a letter containing their
money, but Shui Ta cannot tell them where Shen Teh is. He is very fat-
seven months gone, and relying on Mrs Shin's well-paid discretion and
care. Sun comes with a briefcase and tries to get Shui Ta, who he thinks
has been slipping recently, to take some interest in the details of the
business. He attributes Shui Ta's vagueness and irritability to rumours
The Good Person of Szechwan 119
coursing in the area, and to rainy weather, which always makes Shui Ta
melancholy. Wang, outside, laments the loss of the good Shen Teh who
always bought water from him even in the rain, and who entered this
house months ago never to emerge. He comes in to ask Shui Ta for in-
formation, and in the course of talk lets drop that he knows she was
pregnant when she disappeared. He goes and Shui Ta retires to the inner
room. Sun is suddenly interested in Shen Teh again now that he sees
himself as a potential father; he hears sobbing within and suspects Shui
Ta is merely hiding Shen Teh. When Shui Ta returns Sun attempts to
blackmail him on this basis, threatening to join forces with Wang and
the police in searching for Shen Teh. When he has gone Shui Ta brings
out objects belonging to Shen Teh, but hides them under the table as he
hears steps: Mrs Mi Tzu and Shu Fu, with whom he is negotiating plans
to extend the tobacco manufactory and establish a chain of shops. Sun
and Wang return with the policeman. They find that there is no one
in the inner room, but a bundle of Shen Teh's things under the table;
Shui Ta goes to assist the police with their inquiries.
Interlude: Wang tells the gods of Shen Teh's disappearance and Shui Ta's
arrest. Since they have found no good people, but only war and misery,
and are on the point of having to admit that their moral system places
too great demands on people, they take a keen interest in Shen Teh and
decide she must be found.
Scene 10: 'The gods interrogate the murderer of their good person.'
Courtroom. The group of poor people despair of getting justice from the
trial, as Shui Ta has friends in common with the judge and has bribed him.
But instead of the judge the three gods appear. Shui Ta faints but re-
covers. The gods hear the policeman, Shu Fu and Mrs Mi Tzu in favour
of Shui Ta; the poor on the other hand list Shui Ta's misdeeds. Shui Ta
defends himself: he only came to do the dirty work necessary for the
popular Shen Teh to keep her shop, so he is hated. In a fast-moving
argument Shui Ta's business and personal dealings are summarised. He
insists throughout that all he did was intended to save Shen Teh from
being ruined by the excessive demands made on her charity, but eventu-
ally, worn down by the attacks, agrees to make a confession to the judges
alone. The court is cleared and Shui Ta unmasks himself. Shen Teh
describes her feelings and the difficulty of loving according to their
commandments: she was too small for their great plans. The first god
interrupts her, says they can be satisfied that there is someone bearing
the lantern of goodness in the world, and gives signs for a pink cloud to
collect them and return them to the higher regions. Shen Teh cannot
see how she is supposed to go on, among people she has disappointed,
120 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
pregnant, caught between Sun and Shu Fu. The witnesses re-enter to see
the disappearance of the gods, who allow Shen Teh to call in her cousin
not more than once a month and are deaf to her pleas that this is not
enough to help her.
Epilogue. An actor regrets the bitter ending of the play and invites the
audience to think of a solution: there must be a good one!
The appearance of the gods attaches this play to an old theatrical tradi-
tion which reached its apogee in Raimund's Viennese magic-plays of the
last century where the juxtaposition of the human (all-too-human) and
divine worlds is used comically, satirically but still not without some
remnant of naive wonderment. The subject of a divine visitation is of
course one of the oldest in world literature. Reinhold Grimm speculates
that Brecht based his plot on the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha
(Genesis 19): as Lot took in the two angels and was the only good
person of his town, so is Shen Teh in hers. The motif of the world or
town being saved if there are enough good people is shared. 3 The rest
of the story, admittedly, is radically altered. Esslin finds the first germ
of the subject in Brecht's biography in an incident of 1926 when Brecht,
Dahlin and Bronnen met with a shabby reception in Dresden; Brecht
wrote a poem at the time in which the three writers appear as gods able
to threaten rain and flooding (8, 158f.). Finally, the specific element of
the prostitute's hospitality to a god is to be found in Goethe's poem Der
Gott und die Bajadere.
Within this loose framework of tradition and reference, the plot is an
invented one, as is that of The Caucasian Chalk Circle, in which once
again the traditional motif will only be a jumping-off point for Brecht's
imagination; and it is invented with a single lesson in mind, which sets
it apart from Galileo but implies a close relationship with Mother
Courage: that play proves that war is a continuation of business by other
means, The Good Person shows that business is a kind of war. But it is a
play of obviously much more symbolic type. The symbolic narration point-
ing to a single lesson is in Brecht's terminology a parable. The characters
and situations of the parable are recognisable, logical within themselves
so as to be effective in stage terms. Factory workers, a poor self-employed
small trader, a prostitute turned shopkeeper, petty landlords, artisans,
layabouts - the persons of the play are familiar types generalised enough
for Brecht to make their story apply to all societies based on capitalist
exploitation.
The stage-directions' evocation of a transitional Szechwan, a province
The Good Person of Szechwan 121
whose sky is alternately occupied by gods and mail-planes, is obviously
unrealistic. Hans Mayer has shown that Szechwan is a model, a version
of a split pluralistic society reduced to a small scale and with salient
features emphasised, like Brecht's Mahagonny before it and Frisch's
Andorra and Diirrenmatt's Giillen (in The Visit) after it. The model is
very complex and fragile: 'interesting how every little euor of calculation
comes back at one with these thin steel constructions', Brecht notes
(Aj., 1, 45: 15.3.39). There are elements of massivity: Shen Teh is 'a
big strong person'; the town is 'big, dusty, un-livable in' (Aj., 1, 52: May
1939). But they are not very heavy anchors for a structure which has
nothing to spare, from the very formal exposition at the beginning lead-
ing into the gods' arrival. to the verse epilogue at the end after their final
departure: elements of circularity. Brecht uses the sequence of gestic
elements and controls the tempo with particular care, introducing short
lyrical interludes in Chinese style to add to the play's charm and a comic
scene when Sun and the wedding party wait in vain for the impossible.
The parable play supports better than other types straight apostrophes
to the public, the sheer fantasy of Wang's reports to the gods in his
dreams, and songs sticking out of the text. These make a contrast to the
more brutal parts of the content, the depiction of exploitation and
cruelty (see especially 1531-3: 41£.; opening sections of scene 4), but
also loosen the structure, provide something enjoyable and ornamental.
'hard where the aim is rigidly laid down to give the tiny little scenes
that element of iuesponsibility. chance, that feeling of just scraping
through (dieses . . . passable) that is called "life"!' (Aj., 1, 144:
9.8.40).
The action proceeds on differing planes. The plane of dramatic action
is broken up by the interludes with Wang and the gods, in which the
action is commented on, summarised and seen through the gods' eyes.
The apostrophes to the audience allow us to judge both of these planes
and their relationship, and thus come to a conclusion about the rele-
vance of the gods. 4 The constant reappearance of the gods with no sign
that they have power to do anything useful is part of Brecht's message.
Nor can he put gods on the stage without parody. Their trio at the end
bears echoes of Goethe's Faust II and of A Midsummer Night's Dream in
A. W. Schlegel's translation. Elsewhere too Brecht manages a little literary
satire, as when the unemployed man takes a cigarette in order to become
'a new man', the mystically transformed expressionist hero- and goes off
coughing (1509; 14; 1). Not that Brecht rejects the idea of a new man-
kind- the epilogue suggests it; but certainly not through tobacco
alone!
The rigid structure itself may be seen from a scheme from Brecht's
working notes (Shen Teh and her cousin are referred to by different
names at this stage, but the sense remains).
122 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
The Good Deeds of Li Gung
(1) sheltering a family
(3) saving a man in despair
(4) false witness for a victim
(5) trust in the beloved
(6) trust is not disappointed
(7) surety for those who want to improve themselves
(8) everything for her child
Another note (Mat. S.• 88) consists of a list of bad deeds showing where
they are committed in the play.
With its complex action and psychological development, the play
tended to grow too long. Brecht seems to have feared it would grow to
five hours, and tried to cut it to two-and-a-half (Aj .• 1, 54: 15.7.39).
The plot has 'three sections chronologically presented and governed by
Shen Teh's three goals: to help her neighbors, to love her lover, and to
protect her unborn child from want.' 5 Between them, these three sec-
tions put the question of why evil flourishes in the world and good has
such a difficult time.
This play is more open-ended than any other of Brecht's. Mother
Courage went on with her war, but one could say that the loss of her
last child had some finality about it: whereas Shen Teh is pregnant and
only at the beginning of her troubles. Further sections like those in the
play might succeed each other indefinitely. The epilogue draws atten-
tion to this lack of an ending and asks the audience to supply it. 6 Thus
the communicative elements, the appeal to the recipient and the refer-
nee-back to reality are clearer here than anywhere else in Brecht.
The gods stand for exactly defined moral standards which the individual
is expected to reach regardless of his conditions of life. They are seen
investigating whether it is in fact possible for anyone to reach the stan-
dard of love, justice and honour (Interlude after 7). If one can, they
finally say. then all could. Such moral demands made without consider-
ation of each individual's social handicaps are reminiscent of Kant's
categorical imperative, which places the onus on each person to behave
so that his deeds could be taken as the paradigm of a universal and
benevolent law. Such idealism is to Brecht simply the ideological apolo-
gia for capitalism, with its stress on individual strivings both in the field
of money-making and in the field of moral self-perfection. Brecht wants
to examine the Kantian demands against the real background. Idealism
124 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
explains frustrations met by the individual in the pursuit of goodness by
concepts such as that of divine providence testing the individual with a
view to reward or punishment hereafter. Shen Teh's peculiarity is that,
rather than accepting the well-known paradox of a perfect God (gods)
creating an imperfect world, and doing her best in such a world, she
expects the gods to share her active, dynamic goodness and back up her
single-handed attempt to change the predicament of the inhabitants of
Szechwan. Wang, for instance, reconciles himself to his inability to keep
all the divine commandments properly; but she does not. In the 'Song
of the Defencelessness of the Good and the Gods' (Interlude after scene
4) she asks with increasing force why the gods do not have the armed
power to impose goodness on the world, why good is powerless. This
demand to know underlies the play- but because she unquestioningly
aligns herself with her idea of the gods, Shen Teh cannot perceive the
answer, which is that the gods have disqualified themselves from help-
ing.11 They represent a pantheon which refuses any responsibility for
economic affairs, sees earthly life increasingly dominated by economics,
and yet would like to cling to the fiction that it is in authority. This
declining class, comparable to the Church and the feudalists in Galileo.
is disunited within itself as to what concessions can be made to economic
and technical facts: whether they can admit that floods are due to
neglect of dams, not to their wrath (1491; 5; Prologue)- thus implying
that men are masters of their own fate; whether they can help Shen Teh
along or even compensate her for loss of earnings when she takes them
in. They show just that passivity which she does not; in a sarcastic re-
versal of the classical concept of deus ex machina 12 they call on a pink
cloud at the end to take them away and save them the embarrassment
of trying to regulate her existence. To admit a flaw in the world and
envisage changing it (1605; 107; 10) would be to deny their own divin-
ity; they prefer to believe, in the way long since castigated by Wilhelm
Busch, that 'nicht sein kann, was nicht sein dar£': what does not fit their
precepts is ipso facto impossible and illusory- a vulgar-idealist error.
They disappear into nothingness, the particular end Brecht reserves for
what has outlined its historical function and can be forgotten. They are,
to paraphrase Engels, 'Supreme Beings shut out from the whole existing
world: a contradiction in terms. and an insult to the feelings of religious
people'. 13
So Shen Teh cannot become a saint, the 'Angel to the Slums' (1604;
106; 10); her 'goldene Legende' (1607; 109- 'golden myth' is not quite
the same; Epilogue) cannot be written; what we see is not perfect be-
haviour, but the only possible behaviour of a potentially good person. 14
Martyrdom too is impossible: unlike Johanna Dark (Saint joan of the
Stockyards) Shen Teh is not free to ruin her health in working among
the poor and die in a passionate apotheosis. With a child on the way,
The Good Person of Szechwan 125
she must fight on and harden herself to the rest of the world as the
price of goodness to her flesh and blood.
Wang, at the beginning, awaits the gods' coming with the religious
expectation that they will transform the unholiness of earthly life. For
two thousand years the gods have been hearing that life is too hard for
their commandments to be fulfilled (1492; 6; Prologue). Brecht shows
what can really be expected from the return of the gods. 15 Wang tries
to mediate between gods and men, but men have other things to think
about. The gods are unable even to find lodgings by themselves, they are
quite dependent on man, only as important as men let them be. In fact
the presentation of the religious realm accords with Marx's thought
(Theses on Feuerbach, IV): 'that the secular foundation detaches itself
from itself and establishes itself in the clouds as an independent realm
is really only to be explained by the self-cleavage and self-contradictori-
ness of this secular basis. The latter must itself, therefore, first be
understood in its contradiction and then, by the removal of the contra-
diction, revolutionised in practice.' The gods represent a status quo and
oppose their inertia to any social change. Shen Teh's goodness, u&eful
to them as proof of the thesis that anyone can be good in the world they
set up, is also useful to the parasites who feed off Shen Teh. Like the
trees Wang mentions (Interlude after 6), she is cut down because she is
useful. But she grows again in the form of Shui Ta, becomes a duality,
the example of Luther's statement that man is always simul iustus et
peccator, just and sinful at the same time. In Luther's thought the con-
tradiction is resolved by divine grace, promising redemption from the
necessary sinfulness of human life and pardoning the sinner, if not the
sin. Shen Teh expects something of the sort from the gods when she
admits that she as a poor human was too small for their projects (1604;
106; 10). But they have no grace to bestow. 16 Brecht cannot pardon the
sinner: for the total of sinners adds up to bourgeois society, and the
individual bourgeois must not be accused and then absolved, but- in
the terms of the Communist Manifesto- be made impossible.
The gods by their unworldly generosity enable Shen Teh to convert
herself from a marginal petit-bourgeois (self-employed with no capital)
into a fully-fledged one (capital tied up in trading assets; no employees)
and thence- as Shui Ta- into a capitalist (exploiter of wage-labour). But
at the same time her natural goodness is codified into virtue17 - she is
supposed to live by the divine precepts in order to leave the divine pre-
judices unshaken. The dogmatisation of virtue, reaching its apogee with
Kant, accompanies the historical development of early capitalism. Accord-
ing to the Communist Manifesto the only way to remain an individual
is to be a capitalist. Only for the capitalist's benefit is society structured.
Thus here in the last scene the policeman introduces Shui Ta as 'a man
of principle ... always on the side of the law' (1598; 100). That he
126 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
saved Shen Teh from perjuring herself in the case of Wang against Shu Fu
is a point in his favour; yet precisely Shen Teh's false evidence would
have contributed to getting Wang justice, where all others hesitate to
oppose Shu Fu because of his riches and influence. 18 As later in The
Caucasian Chalk Circle, Brecht is for disregarding the forms and pre-
cepts of the law, a law which is an 'outgrowth of the conditions of
bourgeois production and bourgeois property' (Communist Manifesto)
and so ipso facto suspect.
Shen Teh's active goodness, the mainspring of the action, shows itself
primarily in generosity: the inability to say no. Nature is for Brecht un-
boundedly generous. In scene 3 the rain symbolises this, water enough to
waste- and it puts Wang out of work, as his song (1526f.; 36f.) graphic-
ally statesY Shen Teh buys water from Wang in the rain to refresh Sun
whom she saves from suicide: her bounty, like the rain, falls on the just
and the unjust. She fights throughout the play to unleash her affinity
with nature itself, to give as freely as the 'great udder of the clouds'
(a phrase from the song, 1527, lost in translation), to keep Sun happy, to
protect Wang, to feed her parasites, to provide for her baby. Others lack
this naturalness, and then she is shocked by their indifference: 'When an
injustice takes place in a town there must be an uproar .. .' (1536; 45; 4).
They are responsible for their own fates. But Shen Teh too is soon in-
volved in imperfection. When, to secure a basis for her charity, she
attempts to make a rich marriage, she is just as much a whore as when
she waited in the park for customers. In each case financial relationships
intrude on personal ones. When she falls in Jove with Sun she frees her-
self from the money nexus - only to fall back into it because he needs
her cash for his purposes. When we first see him he is about to hang
himself out of a frustrated desire to be a pilot. He is genuine enough,
he only wants to realise his talents; but that, in this imperfect world,
depends on money. Shen Teh's prosperity comes opportunely for him;
he involves her in expense. Love is, as Shui Ta says, a catastrophe- it
costs money (1546; 54; 5). And when Shen Teh loves, she moves in a
world where she is seen as a sex object. No sooner has she escaped the
life of a prostitute than she falls between Sun and Shu Fu, the one of
whom wants to get money from her by playing on her feelings, while
the other is willing to pay to be allowed to play on her feelings. The
transfer from prostitution to Jove, business to generosity, cannot be made
unilaterally. In her Jove for Sun, Shen Teh wants to provide him with
the means to satisfy his ambitions, to gratify her own wish for uncom-
mercial love, and to be fair to others by returning the old couple's 200
dollars on request. The task is hopeless: a penniless lover or husband is
something she cannot afford. 20 Later, obsessed by the welfare of her un-
born child, she can afford no goodness to anyone else. Her pregnancy
paradoxically does more to force her into masculine attitudes than any-
The Good Person of Szechwan 127
thing else in the play. 21 To assert herself. she has to behave like everyone
else: in a man's world, she must be a man.
The old couple lend money with the same self-denying goodness as
Shen Teh, and are indeed ruined when Shui Ta does not repay the debt
promptly; and they believe in no gods, pure as their goodness is. Un-
fortunately what they intend for the good Shen Teh becomes an element
in the calculations of Shui Ta, who happens to be a capitalist without
capital and dependent on money brought in by Shen Teh's reputation-
nobody is going to give him money. 'Why bark for him, they say, he's
a dog himself!' (Mat. S., 89). The same happens to Shu Fu's blank
cheque; but Shu Fu's munificence, coming from riches gained by brutality
such as he shows to Wang, is tainted. Giving money is a sign of good-
will, but of limited significance- objectively and subjectively.
A puzzling element in the configuration of the play is the one which
corresponds to those who help Shen Teh with money: the parasites who
batten on her goodness and take her money. The first to arrive of the
family of eight are her former landlord and his wife, who had thrown
her out when she was penniless. They are not too soft to make their way
in life, and they have. or had, property. Yet here they are, with all the
family including a niece who is prostitute, begging. Mrs Shin has just
sold the tobacco shop to Shen Teh for a four-figure sum, but immediately
she reappears with a rice-bowl, behaving as if Shen Teh had somehow
evicted her and left her to starve. Was she so deeply in debt that the
price of the shop went on repayments, and was Shen Teh such a bad
businesswoman as to buy this highly suspect business completely un-
examined? Then in the course of the play the poor who form Shui Ta's
workforce are joined by the carpenter and his family; is there not enough
work in Szechwan to keep him independent? The stage of economic
development at which the play is set is not the one at which manual
tradesmen are so easily put out of business, and even if we allow a little
licence here, we still have to ask - in vain - what the parade of the
utterly shiftless and temperamentally dishonest represented by the family
of eight is supposed to prove about economic relationships.
A salient feature of the play is little monologues set apart from the
action, often in free rhythms or at any rate set out as poems of oriental
type in which metrical qualities are less important than the extreme
brevity. the recognisable progression of thought and the striking con-
clusion. Thus in the five lines 'They are bad .. .' (1502; 15; 1) a lesson
about badness is presented by a progression from vagueness to a specific
accusation in the third line, then the statement of the justification for
the vice and a rhetorical question. And the lesson, that the individual is
not to blame for his own badness, is obviously relevant to the play. Such
passages are in effect little parables within the parable play. The songs are
similarly parabolic and contribute to the statement of the play's theme;
The Good Person of Szechwan 133
they may have much or little to do with the action in which they are
embedded. The 'Song of the Eighth Elephant' (1582f.; 87f.; 8)- in a vein
influenced by Kipling 29 - has most to do with the action, having a content
parallel to the situation in the scene and being intended by the workers
to provoke Sun - though he does not rise to the bait. Singing is not
enough to make him feel his position is endangered; he even enjoys the
manifestation of rebelliousness and encourages it: the workers get rid of
their discontent, and rhythmic singing increases the production rate. The
'Song of the Smoke' (1507f.; 19f.; 1), on the other hand, is introduced
as entertainment and has a more complex relationship to action and
theme of the play. Like the 'Song of the Great Capitulation' in Mother
Courage it inculcates resignation or inactivity, and just after it Shen Teh
seems about to despair. But those who sing it are not themselves resigned
or inactive in fact (the same is true of the 'Song of Green Cheese' in
scene 6). F01: most of the figures of the play, despair and activity alter-
nate; they sometimes feel like giving up, as Sun does after scene 6 or
Shen Teh after scene 1; then they return to attempts to shape their own
fate. The motif of smoke seems to be taken from a poem of Nietzsche's
on the fate of the social outcast; and the tone of the whole is asocial.
a reflection of Brecht's early nihilism- the song is an adaptation of his
Der Gesang aus der Opiumhohle ('Song from the Opium Den', 8, 90£.) of
about 1920. The audience has to formulate its own views on the lesson
of the song without direct help from the context. In the Wuppertal pro-
duction of 1955 Shen Teh came forward while it was being sung and
drew the audience's attention to the family sitting around motionless. 80
We are intended to start thinking.
The same applies to the epilogue in which a member of the cast admits
that the solution to the play's problem has not been found. We have
been given enough encouragement to think in terms of social change,
but not had specific remedies suggested to us. Furthermore, we are being
addressed now not by a figure in the play but by an actor, a member of
the same society and a child of the same age as ourselves. Brecht's words
are quoted to us as still relevant. When we are directly addressed during
the play, we may also be encouraged to be aware that it is an actress
who is talking. Then such an aside as that in scene 3: 'In our country I
There should be no dreary evenings . . .' takes on shock value: it says
that, so many years after Brecht, the country we live in is still a miser-
able place.
In scene 8 Mrs Yang takes the role of narrator, standing between
actors and public to 'describe' (1578; 83} and comment on a series of
episodes showing Sun's rise to be Shui Ta's foreman. At the beginning
of the scene, without moving. she shifts the setting from an unspecified
place to the area in front of Shu Fu's houses: she as it were conjures
them up and Shui Ta with them. The whole scene is treated as a short
134 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
story and we see the events of a three-month period through the first-
person narrator. 31 But there again we must think: her attitudes are not to
be shared, we should be on our guard against thinking. for instance, that
Sun really has bettered himself (1582; 86). The narrator. however, can-
not impose herself completely on the story, any more than can the narra-
tor in fiction; the episodes themselves are valid representations of social
reality.
Shen Teh's asides to audience too have to be thought about and per-
haps taken against the grain. Her lapidary abstractions about the need
for patience and forbearance (1503; 15; 1) are all very well, but in the
plot context the carpenter points out that as no one is patient with him
he cannot be patient with Shen Teh: he needs money to feed his family.
A virtue- patience - practised by one person is no virtue.
At least two figures speak to the audience as to a jury which can decide
on their claims: in scene 4 Shu Fu announcing his love for Shen Teh
(1533; 42)- but his behaviour to Wang just before has shown us what
to think of his protestations; in scene 9 Sun showing indignation at the
news of Shen Teh's pregnancy having been kept from him- but one
realises that he has financial interests rather than pure paternal feelings,
he wants a stick to beat Shui Ta with in order to take over the firm him-
self after a scandal (1588f.; 92). In any case his feelings for others are
suspect to us. Thus by being appealed to directly the public is encouraged
to form judgments about the behaviour of the characters. rather than sit
back ;tnd let the plot flow over it.
Less dubious apostrophes to the public explain behaviour, report events
or create a mood. Thus in scene 6 Shen Teh reminds us of those who are
absent but the thought of whom must help her to resist Sun's attempt to
drag her down (1560f.; 66f.). At the outset Wang supplies an exposition;
and in scene 1 Shen Teh brings it up to date (1499; 12). with due atten-
tion to money. Her summary between scenes 5 and 6 is an instance of
events being arbitrarily excluded from the dialogue and reported instead:
Brecht accentuates the psychological aspect by having Shen Teh report
her emotions at the meeting with the carpet-dealer's wife and super-
imposing her emotions at the time of reporting. She tries to minimise her
shock by optimistic arguments about Sun (1553; 60). In scene 4 we saw
the mood for which she reproaches herself: the mood in which love trans-
figures everything. even the town at dawn. and enables her to forget
money (1532f.; 42).
Like other Brecht plays. The Good Person often requires reading against
the grain or reading between the lines. The old couple smile at each other
(1534; 44; 4) when Shen Teh. in thanking them for their help, men-
tions the gods. A note (Mat. S.. 89) shows that they do not believe in
the gods and are merely trying not to offend Shen Teh by contradicting
her. The gods also help in their own discrediting with their farewell
The Good Person of Szechwan 135
'mach's gut!' (1605; cf. 107, 'good luck'; 10), a phrase usually equivalent
to 'be seeing you', but literally 'do it well'. Brecht takes the debased
locution in its stronger sense too: the gods leave Shen Teh to get on with
the job, disclaiming responsibility.
Never staged by Brecht, the play has a generally disappointing stage
history, perhaps largely because of the difficulty of the leading part. Apart
from the first Zurich and Berlin performances, mention should be made
of the Synthaxis Theater Company production in Santa Monica with the
gods descending on rollerskates and ascending on an escalator, 32 and of
the Milan production with sets by Luciano Damiani of fragile lyricism:
white backdrops. pastel colours. 33 For Hamburg, Damiani added rubbish
and puddles of water on the stage. Other productions have used movable
screens. Departing from the principle of full light. Brecht demands pink
clouds for the departure of the gods (Schiller had asked for pink light
for the transfiguration at the end of The Maid of Orleans, an obvious
target for Brecht's parody, representing the idealistic tradition in drama 34).
A contrast of setting is formed by the tobacco factory in scene 8; Shu Fu's
sheds, too damp for his goods, are good enough for people, the crowd-
ing indescribable, the activity with children lugging bales of tobacco and
so forth hectic.
(vn) MICROSTRUCTURES
Small touches of humour contrast with but also correspond to the heavy
moral theme of the play. Thus Hinck (p. 67) sees in Shu Fu, unpleasant
little barber but also rich merchant, ridiculously and unsuccessfully loving
a younger woman. alternately calculating and generous, analogies with the
Pantaloon of the Commedia dell'arte. But Shu Fu in his self-contradic-
tions is also one of the characters who reflect Shen Teh's split. Another
piece of Brechtian humour is that Wang learns of the gods' approach from
a cattle-dealer. not an oracle or anything of the sort; and so earthly
are these unworldly gods that when they go, one of them is afraid their
having given Shen Teh money will be misunderstood. 3 ~
Brecht echoes things the audience will find familiar. The numbers three
and seven, important in Christian imagery, are used repeatedly with no
religious implications, simply for their associations. Wang waits three
days for the goods; three days later Shen Teh buys her shop: Shui Ta
comes thrice, and so on. The number seven occurs in the 'Song of the
Eighth Elephant'. 36 More functional is the use of officialese, which as in
Mother Courage shows the dehumanisation of man, not in war now, but
in business. 37 Shui Ta announces his plans in a form all the harsher for
its euphemistic tone: 'an unpredictable eventuality, which may have cer-
tain consequences .. .' (1591; 94; 9).
Shen Teh's language is carefully worked out. Righteous anger at social
136 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
wrongs is marked by speeches in free rhythm with an interrogative
isolated by a line division: 'How I But for patience could we live to-
gether?' {1503; 16; 1). Lyrical expressions of goodness have adjectival
phrases as apparent afterthoughts: 'But I want your water, Wang. I
'Laboriously carried I Exhausting to its bearer .. .' {1527f.; 37; 3). A
bald statement, itself proof of goodness, is filled out with words which
add grace to the goodness.
Her preceding talk with Sun in the park (1522-6; 32-6) is one of the
best passages for exemplifying gestic language. The dialogue proceeds
not with the pseudo-logic of much dramatic dialogue, but with the leaps
and undertones of real life; its realism is modified by the need to demon-
strate, one by one, the stages in this particular model of human rela-
tionships; and the progress of the dialogue is dependent on scenic
elements. In the first phase Shen Teh seeks an understanding with Sun
which he is unwilling to enter into. What he says up to and including
his speech on being an unemployed pilot is concerned with himself; yet
it opens with a passage of social intent, directly drawing the audience's
attenion to the persistence of the prostitutes. Brecht means us to see
something Sun has certainly not thought out: that it is the poverty of
these women which forces them to work on in the rain. This speech is
rhetorical with its threefold repetition of 'selbst' ('even' occurs twice
only in the translation) and its biblical parallelisms. In the following
dialogue Sun reverts to greater naturalness. He rejects her interest,
claiming she has bandy legs in order to alienate her. But even before this
the phrase 'einen Becher Wasser kaufen vorher' with its shy reference to
his impending suicide (missed in translation) has hinted that his suicide
is really meant to draw attention to himself. as many suicide attempts
are. And since she - a lovely touch - sets about proving that her legs are
not crooked by pulling up her skirt (Brecht typically spares himself the
stage direction for something deducible from the dialogue), he very
quickly lets her shelter under his 'bloody tree'. His self-presentation,
mainly in pilots' jargon and colloquial style, is convincing enough to
show Sun's feeling for the work of a pilot. But the sentence 'Das kommt
nur in eine Kiste, wei! es den Hangarverwalter schmieren kann' deserves
extra attention (the English omits the vital nur. 'only': 'Gets into a kite
by bribing the hangar superintendent'). This is just the way in which
Sun a little later hopes to get a job. By the strains of the socio-economic
system he is immediately reduced to the level of the pilots he despises.
The full import of this sentnce is only apparent later: it is a copybook
example of dramatic irony, an age-old technique which Brecht takes
up with a new function. Whereas traditional dramatic irony points to
the workings of inscrutable fate cutting across human plans and reso-
lutions, Brecht's points to the workings of the economic system: some-
thing made by man and in due course alterable by men. And when men
The Good Person of Szechwan 137
have altered it, then it will be possible for a Sun to be happy that he
knows his flying manuals, instead of worrying about that page which says
'Airmen Not Wanted'.
As Sun's long speech has issued in generalisations (allowing the re-
currence of rhetorical parallelisms and other similar techniques), so
Shen Teh's story of the crane, marking the new section of dialogue, is
of parabolic nature. The crane at once represents and symbolises the
aviator. The restlessness of the crane when its fellows migrate recalls
Sun's watching a plane just before Shen Teh sees him. But in this form
the story of the frustrated flier take on a wider symbolic significance
and we see that Sun himself too is symbolic - of all those who are pre-
vented from living as nature intended; and Shen Teh is half laughing,
half crying because whilst the crane could not be helped, she is full of
confidence that Sun can be helped. As yet (dramatic irony again) she
does not know the trouble helping Sun is going to make for. her.
When the female takes the lead in a relationship the male is the appar-
ently active party. So now, disarmed by her story and her tears, Sun
takes an interest in her which is the sign of his return to life, and when
she remains silent he insists on filling the silence with talk. BreCht helps
the dialogue over this embarrassing stage iii a budding affair by giving
Shen Teh her monologue-poem on the danger of dreary evenings and
high bridges: the last straws in a country so miserable. But the gestus
is not so simple as that. To Sun, Shen Teh optimistically says the dreari-
ness of the evening was the sole cause of his suicidal mood. To the
audience she admits the truth: that poverty and wretchedness are at the
root of the trouble. Shen Teh next has to describe her life. Compared
with Sun's life-story hers is lacking in brilliance and verve and Sun
continually has to keep her going. But her factuality and painful honesty
hint that Sun may be rather hypocritical with his smooth tongue. Yet
there is more. She imitates a masculine voice not in deadly seriousness,
as when she takes the role of Shui Ta, but for entertainment. And she
couches her feelings at being able to give up prostitution in a short poem
which has its social barb too: it is a topsy-turvy situation in which a
woman can be glad to look forward to a year with no man.
The next paradox follows quickly and leads into the third phase of
the dialogue, in which Sun has the initiative. Now the social truth too
can be expressed by Sun: 'Easily satisfied, you are. God, what a town'
is his variant on her poem about dreary evenings. If a little suffices to
make Sun suicidal, a little suffices to make Shen Teh happy. Shen Teh's
attempt to moralise after this sounds too eager, too naive. It seems
dramaturgically false that in this over-bright speech she should introduce
some of Brecht's favourite ideas: the generosity of the poor, the basic
kindliness of productive activities of all kinds. Sun effortlessly re-
establishes his mastery of the situation afterwards by teasing Shen Teh
138 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
a little; and although they have now established a personal relationship
he still calls her 'sister' as if she were any old prostitute. She needs him,
already, more than he needs her.
A bight point of the play's lyricism is Shen Teh's long monologue on
the town in the early morning as seen through the eyes of one in love
(1532f.; 42; 4). Brecht takes up the tradition by which the lover sees
nature in a more friendly light; but the nature he invokes is the town-
scape - and not with the scene transfigured by being still asleep and not
showing the signs of vulgar human activity, as in Wordsworth's sonnet
on Westminster Bridge, but in the process of awakening and going about
its business. Not only is work Shen Teh has actually seen going on des-
cribed, but the city is compared to an old artisan - a comparison which
lends both the town and the worker a dignity they rarely find in liter-
ature. Brecht's ways of celebrating the working class are subtle. The
workers should be allowed to enter into all the sophistications and tradi-
tions hitherto reserved for the cultivated classes. Being the second term
of a comparison is one of the least obvious of those enjoyments.
The 1954 production being the last that Brecht completed of any play,
our summary gives prominence to the scenic effects, as Brecht's last
word. 2
1. The Struggle for the Valley. In the ruins of a village in the Caucasus,
immediately after the Second World War, the members of two colchos
villages, a fruit-growing and a goat-breeding collective, sit smoking and
drinking wine: women, old men, soldiers. The grouping and attitudes
show that their argument is a friendly one. An expert from the capital
is in attendance. Members of the fruit-growing colchos have worked out
a plan for irrigating the valley for their purposes; as the plan lies on
the ground, one of the goat-breeders- they held the valley before the
war- is impressed by it, others are sceptical or angry. But soon they are
convinced that the fruit-growers have a better use for their valley than
The Caucasian Chalk Circle. 141
they themselves have; it is to be assumed that they are willing to stay
further east, where they were evacuated to on Hitler's advance. To cele-
brate the agreement, the fruit-growers announce a theatrical perform-
ance: an old story from the Chinese. A celebrated singer has been engaged
to be compere and is ready, book in hand and glasses on nose. He has
three assistants, and almost every member of the collective has some
part in the play he will narrate. After a meal they start:
2. The Noble Child. The singers describe the lavish court of the Gov-
ernor of a city in Grusinia. This ruler and his retinue appear on their
way to church and are delayed by a crowd of petitioners, showing how
many people are reduced to misery under this regime. They block the
narrow gateway, fighting amongst themselves for the best place. A few
coins and many strokes of the whip are distributed to .them. The Adju-
tant is behind the Governor's wife, and a very tall male nurse holds the
Governor's son, Michel (Michael in the English). a baby, well up and in
view. Two doctors are constantly in attendance on the child. The Fat Prince
Kazbeki, a conspirator, hypocritically greets Governor Abashvili and his
wife. His small nephew keeps behind him but turns an attentive ear to
the ambiguous conversation. The lazy Governor refuses to listen to talk
of the current Persian war going badly. The court enters the church in
procession.
Grusche (in translation Grusha), a kitchen maid, hurrying across the
courtyard with a goose for the Easter feast, is stopped by an acquaintance
of hers, Simon Chachava, the soldier on duty, who teases her; she is too
simple to recognise the meaning between his lines.
On the return from the Church the Adjutant in vain tries to get the
Governor to receive the latest report on the Persian war; the Governor
has eyes only for his peevish wife, who complains that his new building
is done with Michael in mind, not her. The Governor has suspicions of
the Fat Prince but does not follow them up. He goes in to eat, leaving
two Ironshirts (armoured cavalry, but we never see them mounted) on
guard. The Adjutant receives some architects, but the guards refuse to
let him into the palace without a struggle, and instead of joining the
Governor the architects think that if the Fat Prince's conspiracy is
starting to act they should get out of the way.
The fall of the Governor is told in a mime sequence commented on by
the Singer: the Governor is pulled on on a great rope by two heavily
armed soldiers, despite his attempts to hold fast to the palace gate;
he falls and has a spear thrust at his back; he is pulleci across the stage,
still looking back at what he possessed: his last visible attitude suggests
a hanged man.
Attention is turned to the chaos among the lesser folk. The shocked
servants watch a fight between the doctors, who both claim it is their
142 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
day off because neither wants to stay with the Governor's son; one of
them has already packed his bag. Grusha says a comet of ill omen has
been seen. Other servants say the Persian war is lost, all the princes are in
revolt, the Grand Duke has fled and all his governors are to be hanged,
but the poor have nothing to fear. Simon is loyal and is to be among
the guard of the Governor's wife, Natella Abashvili, who is going to flee.
Grusha too is in a hurry, she must help to pack the lady's belongings. But
they take time for a ceremonious betrothal - it becomes apparent that
Grusha has noticed him before, after all; they keep a formal distance
of two yards between them and Grusha ends their talk with a song
describing how faithfully she intends to wait while he is away at the war.
The Adjutant orders Simon off. The servants come, busily preparing
the Governor's wife's luggage; the lady herself casually sits on the back
of a crouching maid to give orders. The servants show an increasingly
rebellious mood, standing up straighter than usual and even contradict-
ing their mistress. The Adjutant presses her to hurry, but she cannot
separate herself from any of her rich clothes and acts coquettishly, used
to having plenty of time and all her whims attended to. Only the sight
of the city, off, burning brings her to her senses, and she flees leaving
everything. The nurse - a woman this time- whom she had sent to fetch
something returns and realises her mistress has left Michael. She gives the
child to Grusha to hold 'for a moment', but she has no intention of re-
turning. Other servants stand around close by and watch while Grusha
with her stupid conscientiousness has the Governor's heir planted on her.
The cook tries to persuade Grusha to leave Michael and flee; reluctantly
Grusha puts the baby down, covers him, and goes to get her things, ready
to go off to her brother's in the mountains.
The Fat Prince, elegant fan in one hand, sabre in the other, appears
with Ironshirts, one of whom has the Governor's head on a lance; it is
nailed to the gate. The Fat Prince orders Grusinia to be searched for
the Governor's child: reward 1000 piastres.
As they leave, Grusha reappears with her bundle. She has heard the
order. She is running off when she thinks of the child and stops. The
scene is mimed and commented on by the Singer from this point; Grusha's
face expresses horror at what she is doing, never goodness. She seems
to hear the child telling her that one who refuses help to fellow-human
will never rest content again. She stays near the child. Night falls. She
gets a lamp and some milk which she warms over the lamp, hastily, as if
she must be off. But she stays, and she covers the child better. Finally
she sighs, picks up child and bundle and sneaks furtively off.
6. The Chalk Circle. The parties to the case assemble in Court. Grusha
is accompanied by the cook, who is willing to swear that the child is
Grusha's, and hopes Azdak will be drunk and deliver one of his freak
judgments. Simon comes too: though still unable to understand Grusha's
marriage, he is ready to swear he is the child's father. Ironshirts get wor-
ried because Azdak is missing. One of them is the one Grusha hit over
the head, but he cannot settle the score with her without admitting that
he was pursuing the child to kill it. The Governor's wife arrives with the
Adjutant and two lawyers; they are glad most of the common people
are prevented from attending the trial by rioting going on in the town.
The lawyers have been trying to get the Grand Duke to nominate a new
judge in place of Azdak. Ironshirts drag in Azdak- who has been de-
nounced by some landowners - and Shauva, tied up, and want to hang
Azdak. The Governor's wife applauds hysterically. Azdak, cornered, reviles
the lronshirts. At this moment a rider brings a despatch containing the
nomination of the new judge: Azdak, who saved the Grand Duke's life.
Hurriedly the Ironshirts cut Azdak down. He is dressed in the the judge's
robe, orders wine to cure his shock and the law book to sit on, and takes
bribes from the lawyers, who give more when he remarks that Grusha
is attractive. He interrupts a lawyer's poetic praise of motherhood to
hear Grusha's case, which is mainly that she has done her best for the
child. The Governor's wife, prompted by the lawyer. says a few words;
but the second lawyer lets slip that not love of the child, but desire to
enter into the revenues of her late husband's estate- which is tied to the
son - is the moving force in the case. Azdak takes note of this and listens
summarily to the lies of Grusha and her witnesses. He wants to cut the
case short. Grusha says there is no wonder, he has got his money. The
cook tries to restrain her, Simon argues with Azdak and is fined for in-
decent language. and the Governor's wife supports herself on the shoulder
of her indispensable Adjutant. Grusha delivers a denunciation of Azdak.
which he listens to with increasing pleasure. fining her thirty piastres
for contempt of court. Then he interrupts the case to hear an old couple
who want a divorce and who stand back to back, but very close to each
148 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
other: they have been married forty years. Grusha has an argument with
the Governor's wife, ending when Azdak says he has reached no con-
clusion from the evidence and must proceed to the Chalk Circle test.
Michael is put in a circle drawn on the floor and the true mother will be
the one who can pull the child out of the circle. Grusha in her simplicity
is so overjoyed when she touches Michael again after so long that she
forgets to pull. As the real mother pulls Michael out of the circle she
reaches after him. Azdak decides to repeat the test; the lawyer, leafing
through his law book, objects, and Shauva is inclined to listen, but the
test takes place. This time Grusha pulls, and she is stronger than the
Governor's wife: but in order not to tear the child in two she lets go.
Azdak starts to take his robe off: he wants to get away quickly after
the verdict, which is in favour of Grusha. The Abashvili estates fall to the
city to be made a playground named after Azdak. He signs a divorce,
but it turns out to be in favour of Grusha rather than of the old couple.
Simon and Grusha are both looking at Michael rather than at each other;
when she gets her divorce Grusha kisses Azdak, but means Simon. Azdak
collects the fines from them. Simon takes Michael on his shoulders so
that they can get out of town quickly. The lawyers desert the Governor's
wife, who is not in a position to pay their fees. She leaves in the Adju-
tant's arms. The Fat Prince's head is still stuck over the gateway as the
less involved characters carry out a leisurely and joyful exit. The Singer
ends the story: Azdak disappeared, but the moral is that things should
belong to those who are good for them.
(11) FORERUNNERS
The motif of the chalk circle is ancient and widely known. 3 The quarrel
of two women before a wise judge over which is the true mother of a
child goes back to the judgment of Solomon {I Kings 3, 16-28); in the
Hui Lan Chi {'Chalk Circle') of the Chinese author Li Hsing-dao (or Li
Hsing Tao, thirteenth century), the motif of personal enrichment is
already present: the real object of the court case is the inheritance which
is bound to the child·. Hai Tang. the (socially inferior) second wife of the
rich man Ma, has borne him an heir, endangering the first wife's prim-
acy. Mrs Ma murders the husband in order to enjoy life with her lover
Tschao. accuses Hai Tang of the crime, and claims the child (and the
estate) as her own. She tries to kill Hai Tang, who escapes by chance.
A bribed judge finds in her favour, but by pure chance an appeal judge
is incorruptible and determines maternity by the chalk circle test: the
child is put in a circle, the claimants are directed to pull him out, and
the one who lets go because she does not want to hurt him is the true
mother. The child and the estate are adjudged to her, Mrs Ma punished.
The Caucasian Chalk Circle 149
In a way the story might appeal to Brecht, with its clear social bias;
dramaturgically, it has instances of self-introduction and sung inter-
polations which would interest him; 4 and that Hai Tang only by very
good luck survives and gets justice is perhaps an element in Brecht's
conception of Grusha's vicissitudes.
In 1925 Max Reinhardt put on a lyrical and fantastic adaptation of
the play by the poet Klabund {Alfred Henschke). Brecht's interest in this
version was reinforced after Klabund's death: his widow, Carola Neher,
was one of Brecht's actresses. The play was a success in London, and was
produced by Piscator in New York in 1940-1. Another precursor to be
mentioned is a celebrated German enlightenment play on parenthood,
Lessing's Nathan the Wise: as Ritchie (pp. 50f.) reminds us, looking
after the child is here set alongside the ties of blood, and Nathan, after
being established as a good foster-father, is revealed as the real father
too.
Brecht's first treatment of the theme was perhaps a parody of Klabund
-the interlude 'The Elephant Calf' in Man is Man. 5 In 1940 a short story,
Der Augsburger Kreidekreis {'The Augsburg Chalk Circle'), transfers the
theme into the world of Mother Courage and radically re-evaluates it.
In a Catholic attack on Augsburg during the Thirty Years War, a rich dyer
is killed; his wife flees, leaving their child behind. A maid Anna takes the
child to her brother's; he has married a strict and well-to-do Catholic
who would not take in a Protestant child, so Anna claims it is hers.
When no father turns up, the sister-in-law is dubious. By marrying a man
apparently at death's door Anna regularises her position; the man does
not die, but she gets used to life with him. At last the dyer's wife comes
to claim her child. Anna appeals to the judge Dollinger, famed for his
fairness. She is suspected in court of wanting the inheritance, but insists
she does not care about that, only about the child. The chalk circle test
proves she is the true mother; she keeps the child. It was of this story
that Brecht thought when the chance of writing a play for Broadway
was offered him. To it he adds the Azdak plot. The figure may owe some-
thing to Haitang's brother in Klabund, a revolutionary student who be-
comes a judge, and to the stories of a historical figure, the magistrate
Pao or Bau Dschong, best known to us as the Judge Dee stories. 6
The play is hard to classify. Brecht denied that it was a parable appar-
ently because the argument of act 1 is resolved before the main action,
the Grusha and Azak plots, starts; the main action is thus not used to
help in solving any present-day problem. In early drafts, admittedly, and
in later summaries, Brecht defers the decision about the valley to the
150 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
day after the pedormance of the main action (17, 1203; Mat. K .• 16).
Walter Hinck points out a more basic consideration, that the main action
concerns a child, the opening action land; it would thus be incommen-
are to reduce the main action to a mere backing-up of the conclusions
reached in act 1. But Hinck (pp. 35f.) concludes that the first act is
thus merely accidental and dispensable. a conclusion too often reached
also by directors wanting to shorten the running time, and even by Harry
Buckwitz in the Frankfurt production of 1955.7 Omitting act 1 reduces
the play to an interesting anecdote in which an improbable happy end-
ing is wrung from a continuingly hostile historical situation, and to
exactly the kind of play Brecht objected to when he met it on the natural-
ist stage: one in which there is no criticism of the idea that social catas-
trophes happen by fate, no perspective towards a different, less alienatory
social world. Brecht says the prologue is necessary to motivate his
changes of the Chalk Circle theme; only the setting in the Soviet Union
explains the whole play (Mat. K .• 28). Grusha and Azdak work illegally
to do good in an unalterably unpromising state of affairs. The peasants
of act 1 are able to do good, by considering in a spirit of amity and
fairness the use of their valley. without fear of bad laws. Where the social
situation is right. people can be helpful to each other without bringing
trouble on themselves - and only then. The two problems - valley and
child- are in some ways analogous, in others not; and whilst the finding
is the same. that things should and can be entrusted to those who make
the most of them and care for them best. the social worlds in which the
verdict is reached are crassly contrasted. (The finding was applied by
Brecht to the eastern areas of Germany arbitrarily transferred to Poland
at the end of the war. Aj .• 2, 749: 3.8.45; but that he was thinking of
them in writing the play8 is a chronological impossibility.)
The various elements (commune plot, Grusha plot, Azdak plot) use
widely differing tones and conventions. Act 1 is apparently set in a
particular place and time. but cannot really claim such closeness to real-
ity. The time of the other acts is left vague, and for all it means to the
Western audience, the place (Nukha, a city of Soviet Azerbaijan some
200 km east of Tiflis) might just as well be vague too. Brecht uses the
unfamiliar name 'Grusinia' for Georgia; Georgian names were substituted
at a late stage for Russian ones. 9 The Azdak plot is very discursive. The
Grusha plot, on the other hand, despite (or because of) its episodic struc-
ture is firmly based on traditional dramatic tension, and the whole Azdak
plot, interpolated by a bold stroke of disregard of dramatic chronology
exactly at the point where we are most tense about the fate of Michael.
is a retarding element of the first water. The stories of Grusha and of
Azdak are set off by the same event, the Easter rising (2065; 61; 5), but
Brecht chooses to start them separately and only bring them together
with the event which ends them both.
The Caucasian Chalk Circle 151
Critical controversy rages around all these breaks. Peter Leiser finds
the question of a mother for a child qualitatively so different from the
question of use of a tract of land that he feels Brecht has lost track of
his criteria of proportion. 10 Fuegi (p. 145) on the other hand makes out
a case for act 1 as 'a kind of decompression chamber as we step from
the here and now into the never-never': contemporary farmers lead us
carefully into the stylised presentation of the ancient tale.
According to Brecht the Grusha and Azdak plots show to the colchos
spectators 'a particular kind of wisdom, an attitude which may be ex-
emplary in the case of their topical dispute'. thus giving a background
demonstration of the practicability of this kind of wisdom and some idea
of its historical origins (17, 1205; Mat. K., 18). Grusha and Azdak are
pioneers .of what will in the fulness of time become habitual attitudes.
The communes have already in act 1 shown what can be done by
reason. The argument about the valley is doomed, by any conventional
knowledge about human behaviour, to end in deadlock and to have
to be decided by higher authority or by force. But Brecht shows it being
amicably settled, thanks to the secure social situation in which the goat-
keepers have an alternative tract of land and can count on the same
state support wherever they are. To envisage such a situation is an act,
if not of faith, at any rate of optimism. The dramaturgical equivalent of
a mood of optimism is a comedie, in the sense of a non-tragic play which
may have more or fewer overt comic elements.
In line with the attitude thus imposed by the optimistic perspective,
the pioneers of modern attitudes are made the protagonists of plots in
which, despite the barbarous conditions of their past era, a happy ending
can be salvaged. Grusha enters of her free will into a situation which
by normal ideas of human nature is hopeless. A defenceless girl moving
across country in time of war and rebellion, clutching a child with a price
on his head- it is a hopeless endeavour. When she allows herself to be
married off it seems to put an end to hopes of a happy ending to her
love for Simon. A villager hurrying to accuse himself of crimes against
the people, only to find that the people is no more in power than it ever
was - the wonder is that he does not end on the gallows.
But the Soviet citizens of the communes are to be entertained, not
saddened, by the fate of their ancestors. Mayer (p. 243) describes the
conception of the Grusha and Azdak plots as 'fairy-tale material'; indeed
the saving of a happy ending from such vicissitudes is typical of fairy-
tale- and also of sensational 'cliff-hanger' films, comic strips and stage
comedy. So is the relationship of character and plot: 'the poor simple
person despised by the rich proves helpful and resourceful and overcomes
all obstacles to win the prize in the end.' 11 Brecht goes deeper than most
such literature. But he also includes more overtly comic elements. Azdak
is a comedy figure of vitality and cunning; his virtuoso performances of
152 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
judging two cases at once are given a serious function in the plot when
he bungles a divorce and so frees Grusha to marry Simon. The Ironshirts
who pursue Grusha, cavalry on foot, trudging against the stage turntable,
are figures of fun, but their pursuit forces Grusha to retain the baby and
thus keeps the plot moving. The scene of Grusha's marriage, for which
the monk with sarcastic glee demands 'a hushed Wedding March or a gay
Funeral Dance' (2055; 52; 4), is ended by the resurrection of the bride-
groom, resulting in the comic exodus of the wedding guests but an un-
welcome tum in Grusha's fortunes. The comic may be the final and true
perspective on human life, but has to assert itself against the decidedly
tragic: Brecht's optimism is not Panglossian. In act 1 the tragic is
represented by the destruction in the war against fascism, in the main
actions by the oppression and insecurity inherent in the feudal system;
in each case it is overcome but not negated. A Hegelian synthesis, com-
bining its elements yet not superseding them, is a possible analogy; closer
is perhaps the thought of Brecht's favourite Mo Tzu on the two aspects
of the universe- yang the masculine, the sunny side, the active; yin the
converse; both intertwined, each a valid and necessary part of a universe
in which the higher element and the guarantee of the meaningfulness
of the whole is however represented by yang. Such oriental serenity
on Brecht's part has led to a comparison with Shakespeare's last
plays. 12
(IV) NARRATION
'Terrible is the temptation to do good!', the Singer tells us (2025; 25; 2).
As Grusha takes the child, music expresses the threat of retribution for
this theft. The Singer's paradox draws our attention to the state of an
age in which the ageless quality of goodness (the abstract quality is
invoked in the German text) is something to be resisted. But the theme
of goodness- as general charity, and as doing one's best for a single
child - has been treated in The Good Person, and Brecht does not just
repeat himself. The particular twist in this play is that Grusha takes on a
strange child out of joy at her betrothal to Simon. The temptation to
do good is an almost sexual one: Verfuhrung, seduction. 22 'I took him be-
cause on that Easter Sunday I got engaged to you. And so it is a child of
love', she tells Simon at the end (2105; 96; 6). And the child leads her
into marriage to another, thus very nearly preventing the engagement to
Simon from turning into marriage. Simon is invented by Brecht independ-
ently of the concept of Grusha's child not being her own, and his func-
tion is to complicate the plot.
But at the same time Simon represents the promise of a fulfilment. In
Mother Courage, Kattrin was not only prevented from taking on orphan
children by the colder attitude of her mother, but also unable to get
The Caucasian Chalk Circle 15 7
herself a man. Grusha gets at one stroke the promise of a man, and the
reality of a child. The promise is redeemed: despite her marriage to an-
other, Simon declares himself willing to perjure himself for her (like
Shen Teh for Wang). and in the comedy ending she is freed to marry
him.
When Grusha actually takes on the child, under the influence of her
personal joy, it is for quite direct and universal reasons. Her sensitivity
is expressed in the magnificent narration (2024; 24; 2) of what she thinks
she hears the child saying. and it is a threat: by closing one's ear to a cry
for help one cuts oneself off from the simple contentment of existence
for ever. She tries to resist the message, but in vain. In the eyes of the
world she may be concerning herself with dangerous things that are
none of her business, she may be infringing the sacred rule that charity
begins at home; but humanitarian impulses overcome her. (The hesitation
before she takes the child has been said to be borrowed from the Chaplin
film The Kid 23). In her own view she is merely keeping the peace with
herself. She sighs when she lifts up the child, for she knows she is taking
responsibility for a hunted boy with a price on his head, something which
must bring her anxiety and perhaps danger.
She wants at first only to get Michael out of danger. She is quite ready
to leave him with the peasant couple once she has realised it is imprac-
ticable for her to take him further without nappies or supplies. At this
point she is so keen to get the child safely billeted and to take up the
threads of her own life that she has changed her mind about going to
her brother's and wants to return to Nukha to await Simon. So she has
not thought about how to bring Michael up. Then comes the realisation
that the Ironshirts are searching for the child in exactly the direction
where she has left him, and the turning-point of the plot when in order
to save him she has to hit the Corporal over the head. After this, she
as well as Michael is hunted, both are in the same boat (2043 'Mitgegan-
gen, mitgehangen'; cf. 42 'Live together, die together'). Grusha and the
peasant woman have each done exactly what they wanted not to when
they see Ironshirts. The woman betrays the child though she wanted to
keep it; Grusha gives herself away and has to act desperately to keep
the child, though she wanted to lose it. The apparently better situation
for the child was really almost fatally catastrophic.
Now, having done much for Michael already, she makes him hers. She
dresses him in her blanket instead of his fine linen and re-baptises him
(2041; 40). Almost the first thing she said about him was: 'He hasn't
got the plague. He looks at you like a human being' (2023; 23; 2). Now,
from a sort of taboo object dangerous for the lower orders to touch,
he is to be transformed into a true human being. The baptism is to
signify conversion to positive (rather than hypocritical) Christianity. The
song at the end of act 3 is about Michael (2044, 'auf dich'; missed in
158 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
the translation). It has a social awareness which critics have paid too
little attention to. She sets out consciously to divert Michael from the
ways laid for him by heredity. His thief-father wanted to lay out a new
wing to the palace, pulling down the houses of the poor to do so - all
for Michael (2009, 2013; 11, 14; 1). His whore-mother is never seen
without the Adjutant. Both have been a scourge to the poor, tiger and
snake. But Michael is to feed children and foals. In act 4 his education
is proceeding. Bent at the loom, Grusha sings a song with useful lessons
about not making oneself too obvious, which she applies to their present
situation as well as to war (2048; 46). After her marriage he is seen
trying his hand at mending a straw mat (2058; 55): work-orientated
play. Her defence before Azdak is based on her having brought him up
'to be friendly with everyone' and 'to work as well as he could' (2096;
88; 6), and she wants to teach him more words (2103; 95). Her unspoken
reaction to Azdak's tempting offer that if she lets the child go to its
real mother it will be rich completes the picture: 'He who wears the
shoes of gold I Tramples on the weak and old .. .' (2102; 93)- and what
is more, being so evil is too great a strain for a man, and it would be
better for him to fear hunger than to fear the revenge of the hungry.
So Grusha develops ideas on education which are typical of Brecht in
their double basis: class-consciousness and humanitarianism. As in The
Good Person the exploiting class is as alienated as the exploited, and
suffers from the need to be harsh, so here. As it was not Shui Ta's fault
that he was so hard, so here Grusha actually takes it on herself to save a
potential exploiter from the consequences of birth into the ruling class-
by making him a worker, a useful member of society. 24 In scene 6, finally,
her attack on Azdak shows awareness of his apparent role as the judicial
defender of private property and exploitation (2100; 92).
The other, more obvious, side of Grusha is her naivety. At the be-
ginning, the cook tells her she is none of the brightest (2023; 23; 2).
Her kindness lacks anything to moderate it. She calls herself a sucker
(2051, 'die Dumme', Brecht's translation of 'sucker' as explained 17,
1206 and Mat. K., 19; cf. 48 'the fool'; 4). But really she is closer to
Kattrin, who becomes self-sacrificingly good only after a series of catas-
trophic alienations, than to the unstoppable existential goodness of Shen
Teh. Like Mother Courage's daughter she is a tireless worker, the one
sent for the extra goose, a strong and willing girl- Brecht cast Angelika
Hurwicz in both parts, solid and down-to-earth. her physique and face
counteracting any desire to see her as a little-girl-lost. Grusha is the
timeless, practical, four-square peasant, but with some of the monomania
afflicting Bruegel's Dulle Griet, the madwoman rushing open-mouthed
through a nightmare world on a mission she alone understands. 25
At the beginning, at least, she may be helpless and silly, but she has
the stamina and obstinacy she will need for her task. Grusha was pure
The Caucasian Chalk Circle 159
and goody-goody only in the first version written for Luise Rainer;
immediately after sending the script off to her Brecht was discontented
and rewrote the part completely (A;., 2, 671: 8.8.44; Mat. K., 32£.). In
rehearsal, he contemplated hinting that she stole on her journey with
Michael in order to feed the two of them (Mat. K., 72f.). In fulfilling her
function vis-a-vis Michael, Grusha develops herself, 'changes herself, with
sacrifices and through sacrifices, into a mother for the child' (Mat. K.,
23), from a naive girl into a thinking woman.
She also undergoes the strangest twists and turns of the plot, as when
the end of the war transforms her from a virgin widow with an adopted
son and a lover far away, into an unwilling wife who must fear the re-
turn of her lover and cannot account to him or to her husband for the
child. A final irony in the last scene is that, having looked after Michael
when the Governor's wife could not be bothered with him, she wants
nothing more badly than to be allowed to go on wearing herself out and
involving herself in expense for it! Here she and her poor friends are con-
trasted in the stage grouping with the Governor's wife and lawyers: the
productive against the parasites of society. 26 In the meantime she has
survived a series of dangers so crassly presented as to verge on the
comic. The way she hits the bending corporal is certainly funny; her
crossing of a bridge which collapses immediately afterwards takes one
into the world of Victorian melodrama. With each of these perils she adds
to the self-sacrifice which is implicit in taking the child on in the first
place. The more pressures are put on her, the more her refusal to let
society alienate her stands out. What began as a quick rescue under-
taken to salve her conscience turns gradually into a total commit-
ment.
Finally Azdak's freak judgment gives her peculiar productive talent as
a mother free rein; it is blessed by society, institutionalised. At last she
can be herself without fighting everyone else. The ending emphasises that
men are made what they are by social life, not by biology. For all prac-
tical purposes Michael is Grusha's child now. This application of the
Marxian statement that social being determines consciousness has alien·
ated some believers in la voix du sang, but is surely understandable even
to them as an answer to the racial madness which is what National
Socialism made of theories of heredity.
The Soviet citizens of act 1 have not only just fought Hitler. an ex-
pression of the political will of the Socialist system; they also live in a
state which by its very nature is a constant challenge to all forms of
capitalism. In contrast to the state of destructive competition in capital-
ism. of which Hitler's war was in Brecht's view only the most striking
development. here the good of society and the good of the individual
converge. The pleasures of living in Communism are the pleasures of
production. The people we see are connoisseurs of cheese. whether
themselves goat-keepers or not. They are fascinated by the tools of pro-
gress. such as plans for new technical advances: they vindicate Galileo's
confidence that mankind is open to the workings of reason. They take
pleasure in discussion, they can quote Mayakovsky, and they have enough
leisure to rehearse the play of the Chalk Circle, which has been revised
(2007; 8; 1)- this clearly refers to the fact that the biological mother
does not get the child- to bring it into line with new ideas of productiv-
ity. They feel pleasure that their existence allows decisions for the
benefit of all to be made so easily, whereas in the feudal world many
chances were necessary to provide a happy ending. T. M. Holmes, how-
ever, points out that even in 1945 the wise communal decisions are only
made possible by a bureaucrat, the visiting commissar, waiving his right
to impose his will on the communes, so that there is in act 1 at least
some of the same tension as in the rest of the play. 54
The only thing to suffer in the communal life shown here is the in-
dividual's attachment to a particular piece of ground. The old man on
the right appeals to law, history and sentiment- 'what kind of tree
stands beside the house where one was born' (2003; 5)- in his attempt
to keep the valley, and finds the cheese produced elsewhere 'barely
decent' (2003; 4) on the unprovable ground that the goats like the
strange grass less. But his opposite number disagrees about the cheese:
it is excellent. This fits with the reversal of the Chalk Circle story. An-
other mother is not necessarily bad for the child; other ground is not
necessarily bad for the goat. The two concepts attacked here are founda-
tions of National Socialist ideology, the components of the slogan 'Blut
und Boden', blood and soil: the ties of blood leading to the concept
of race and Aryan purity, the attachment to the soil considered to justify
the building of a Greater Germany. It is the modern Georgians who not
only overcome Hitler, but also change the old play to give it lessons
opposed to his ideology.
164 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
Brecht's answer to Hitler is not now, as in the first version of Galileo
or in Schweyk, the answer of the little man who has to duck under
until it is safe to show his head again. It is a triumphant assertion which
need not stop to argue or question. Hitler and his ideology vanquished,
the world is again safe for those who are truly modern, who in their
working life are busy improving things, putting to work a productive
critical attitude, and able to entertain themselves with plays which, as
adapted, mixing old and new wisdom (2007; 8; 1), show the same atti-
tudes in an embryonic stage. The topicality and relevance of the Grusha
and Azdak plots thus depends on their being embedded in a post-Hitler
reality.
A frequent excuse for cutting this scene- which is not a 'prologue';
Brecht dropped this designation of it in 195 6- is that it is impossibly
starry-eyed in its view of Soviet Russia. Critics who believe that Brecht
the Communist and Brecht the Writer kept tripping each other up ex-
plain it as the product either of wilful blindness to facts or of a cynical
acquiescence in East German demands for ideology and socialist realism
(though it was written before East Germany was invented). The truth
is more complicated. Brecht had written 'the USSR is still very far from
reaching the state of productive forces in which leadership, e.g., no
longer means domination' (Aj., 1, 77: 1.1.40). He did not believe Stalin's
state would wither away: Walter Benjamin charmingly describes Brecht
impersonating the Soviet Union: he 'assumes a cunning, furtive expres-
sion ... and says, with a sly, sidelong glance ... : "I know I ought to
wither away".' 35 And Rosa Luxemburg, after whom one of the colchoses is
named, was a Communist leader by no means happy with Russian
developments between October 1917 and her death. Incidentally, Brecht
almost named the goat-owning commune after her, but Eisler pointed
out that 'goat' in German is a term for a silly female, not to be associ-
ated with a great revolutionary! 36 Russian critics, notably Ilya Fradkin,
are rightly sceptical about the scene as a portrayal of Russian actuality.
and at least one Russian director has declared it unstageable in Russia. 37
Nor it is a tongue-in-cheek tractor- Utopia; if Brecht wrote such pieces at
all, it was only after settling in East Germany. Nor is it a forecast about
Soviet reality of 1985 or 2025, for in the course of historical develop-
ment dialectical changes would by then have come about which a writer
in Brecht's time could not anticipate. 38
Perhaps we can best call it a provisional Utopia: people in the present
represented as acting in ways which can only be expected, if at all, in
a very distant future. Scene 10 of Galileo foreshortens history similarly,
making an ideal state spring out of the seventeenth century. Brecht
chooses to disregard all the evidence about the Russian reality of 1945
and to hold fast to one overriding aspect: as the most progressive
country, Russia is the one to associate with an ideal of humane be-
The Caucasian Chalk Circle 165
haviour. That the visiting arbitrator-commissar finds no work to do
adumbrates the Marxian withering-away of the state in a quite fantastic
manner. Brecht presumably holds on to the apparent presentation of a
real place in the present time only as a counterbalance to the vague
chronology of the other two plots and their fairy-tale improbability.
Discussion will continue as to whether the treatment is adequate; but we
should do Brecht the justice of assuming that he sincerely wanted to
portray, just for once, a positively better society such as he is striving
towards, and that this was the best way he could find.
The bridge episode of act 3 is a vehicle for empathy with Grusha, and -
like the death of Swiss Cheese in Mother Courage- does a great deal
to undo the effects of all the social comment, the coolness and the dis-
tancing techniques used elsewhere. The most notable of these are dealt
with under the headings of narration and setting, but it should be pointed
out here that whilst the Grusha plot has an epic narrator the Azdak plot
is less in need of one. Thus by a bold stroke Brecht was able to make
Ernst Busch double as Singer and Azdak in the 1954 production. This
underlines that against Grusha's silence and hesitancy, Azdak is voluble
and in control, the driving force of his plot, 39 just as in Galileo, which
has a similar lack of epic effects, Galileo was. It also stresses that the
Azdak we see is an actor, whom for the first part of the play we have
seen as an actor-singer; and it allows Ernst Busch to show the range of
his talents.
When Grusha does talk, she is down-to-earth. The pithy 'Mittagszeit,
essen d'Leut' (2027; cf. 27 'Noon time, eating time') shows a South
German stamp in its elision and impure rhyme, and the following sen-
tences vary from the colloquial ('wie bei Fiirstens', bringing the nobility
down to the level of neighbours) to the vulgar ('earned our money sitting
on our bottom'). False deference to superiors is not in her make-up; she
calls Azdak a 'drunken onion' (2100; 92). Her songs are popular: that
promising to wait for Simon (2018f.; 19; 2) echoes distantly a popu-
lar song of the Second World War by the Soviet writer Konstantin
Simonov; 40 the song of Sosso Robakidse (2026; 26; 3), intended to
give her courage, has also a topical reference at the time of a Persian
war.
Azdak on the other hand has a rich plebeian langu:tge and a stock of
proverbs which get great social statements into a small compass. 41 In
a few lines of dialogue with Simon, 'When the horse was shod . . .'
(2099; 91; 6), the truism that the weaker is subject to the stronger
(from Galileo) is followed through a series of absurd consequences culmin-
166 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
ating in the weak person asserting the freedom he claims only by hurting
himself (a theme from Mother Courage). Finally Azdak objects to Simon's
crudity, but he himself is none too careful. Also part of his linguistic
virtuosity is the parody of the Grand Duke's clipped speech, leading into
the proof that all the princes have a way of speaking that should be
suspect to the lower orders (2078; 72). The comic element is obvious
in this overflowing energy, set against the muted lyricism of the Grusha
scenes. The Singer too in his ballad of Azdak gleefully presents such pairs
of concepts as 'Gibher und Abgezwack' (2083; cf. 77, 'Come Here's and
Listen-You's') among its colourful rhymes to the name Azdak.
The Singer's language is marked by rhetorical procedures, such as
parallelism with variation: 'Then the Governor . . . I Then the for-
tress ... I Then the goose .. .' (2013; 14; 2). Adjectives appositionally
placed after their nouns lend emphasis: 'Die Panzerreiter nehmen das
Kind fort, das teure' (2064; cf. 61, 'The Ironshirts took the child away,
the precious child'). Apostrophe and invocation give a solemn tone: 'Oh,
blindness of the great! ... Oh, Wheel of Fortune! Hope of the people!'
(2015; 15; 2)- but this is also parodied: 'Oh, confusion! The wife dis-
covers that she has a husband!' (2058; 55; 4). His lyrical descriptions of
the effect of passing time on Grusha are reminiscent, with their emphasis
on transcience, of Brecht's early poems: 'As she sat by the stream to
wash the linen .. .' {2059f.; 56; 4). 'Mit gehenden Monden' makes two
poetic effects in the German which are lost in translation ('As the months
passed by'). But a more sophisticated way of producing sympathetic
awareness of Grusha's problems is to interpolate officialese and contorted
syntax to contrast with the emotive terms: 'Sehnsucht hat es gegeben,
gewartet worden ist nicht. I Der Eid ist gebrochen. Warum, wird nicht
mitgeteilt' (2063; cf. 60, 'There was great yearning .. .'). Sentiment is
prevented from relapsing into sentimentality by avoiding such obvious
terms as 'empfinden', to feel emotions. Another way of encouraging
sentiment without false pathos is by introducing everyday actions among
the potentially emotive content: 'I had to care for what otherwise would
have come to harm I I had to bend down on the floor for breadcrumbs I
I had to tear myself to pieces for what was not mine .. .' (2064; 60; 4).
The leisureliness of the singer's reports of Grusha's inner life, the cun-
ning metrical variations, even the idyllic comment in some places, as in
the evocation of the evening Angelus (2024; 24; 2) cannot blind one
to the social context. Mention of the Angelus is part of Michael's threat
to Grusha: if she does not heed him, she will not partake of life's satis-
factions. But more in evidence in the play, and in the singer's comments,
is the obverse: the punishment for heeding Michael's cries, the punish-
ment inflicted by a hostile society on goodness.
There are frightening elements in the play. The Ironshirts in their
stiff, shapeless clothing and grotesque attitudes repeat an effect which
The Caucasian Chalk Circle 167
had been a success in the pre-Hitler Man is Man. Against a background
of a severed head (the Governor's head is displayed in Nukha after his
execution right to the end of the play) and a hanged judge they listen
threateningly to Azdak's self-denunciation and then suddenly. with de-
moniac laughter, turn to his persecution, which ends just as abruptly. But
the two who pursue Grusha are also comic, and a microcosm of the
social order: one to give orders, the other to execute them. Brecht rubs
in the unfairness of things by using N.C.O. cliches. The private is always
a 'blockhead'. his every movement shows he is 'insubordinate', he is
subjected to orders in the infinitive (a nuance lost in the English) and little
sermons: 'A good soldier has his heart and soul in it .. .' (2034; 33; 3).
The corporal's rough sadism comes out in his coarse innuendoes in
dealing with Grusha. Otherwise verbal humour is rare in the play: a
restrained pun on Trauung. wedding, and Trauer, mourning (2053; cf. 50)
comes in the wedding scene, an episode of wild movement. The apparently
imminent death of the bridegroom makes everyone hurry over the mar-
riage: his mother rushes around making arrangements, the villagers rush
in so as not to miss anything- and crowd the room intolerably. Finally
the two women, unable to get round the guests. have to throw the bits
of cake among the crowd, a buffeted and swaying knot of eating, chatter-
ing. singing. praying people among whom eventually the talk about the
end of the war becomes audible. The dying husband, a pale and skeletal
figure, suddenly appears at the door- a memento mori turned into a
husband, the spectre at the feast who turns the mock wedding into a
reality and stops Grusha's intention of using it as a social convenience.
This night-shirted apparition causes a swift exodus of screaming guests. 42
Movement is important at the end of the play too. Brecht intended, in
order to avoid intrinsically false folkloristic dancing. to arrange the final
dance as a set of mimes by which all those present would demonstrate
their work- emphasising the theme of productivity better than general
pointless merrymaking could; but as this turned out hard to understand,
it was cut to a few dance steps before the final curtain. 43
As usual. Brecht added plenty of business in rehearsal. The peasant
woman to whom Grusha wants to entrust the child, for instance, ex-
presses when she comes out her suspicion of anything left lying around
in these uncertain times. her fear that someone may be lying in wait
with a cosh to catch her off guard, her apprehension that the child has
some infectious disease. her awareness that children picked up off the
street usually turn out ne'er-do-wells whatever one does for them; then
she finds the child has fine linen, is of good family; and suddenly she
decides to give the child a home despite all doubts (Mat. K .. 65-7). And
after she has put forward her arguments for keeping the child, her hus-
band does not follow her in immediately. which could mean he is going
to continue arguing inside; he stays to shake his head at the folly of
168 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
women and. still more. at the folly of men who let the weaker sex get
the better of them (Mat. K.. 69). In the final scene, the first lawyer
advances to make his plea with self-satisfied bounds and an exaggerated
bow to the judge. A similar incongruity is that between the nephew's
diminutive figure and his family mask, clipped speech, marionette-like
movements, and pretensions to the office of judge. 44
Dessau's music is difficult and controversial. 45 Some of the melodies
are taken from Azerbaijan folk music, with characteristic ornamentation;
but the melodic ornamentation of the Jewish synagogue tradition, and
a whole catalogue of other exotic effects, are also drawn on. Special
percussion, including three tomtoms, gives more atmosphere than Gru-
sinian authenticity, and the Berliner Ensemble used a special Gongspiel-
a set of eight gongs played by hammers like a piano and having pedals
for damping or for a special steely effect. Dessau desires nine in-
strumentalists; at least five are necessary. For Azdak's investiture as judge
Dessau provides a little march quoting the waltz from Act II of Tchai-
kovsky's Eugene Onegin- with melody in the accordion and accompani-
ment in the percussion! Controversy centres, however, around the long
part of the Singer. which is laid out for v-effects. Coldness in telling
Grusha's story suggests the horror of an era in which kindness is self-
destructive. Such phrases as 'Feuer schlugen sie aus meinem Nacken'
(2063; 59 'My neck was burnt by fire' is not so graphic and direct; 4)
are set in the cadence of a question and with musical accent on gram-
matically unstressed syllables, to aid the singer in expressing surprise
at the emotion or its formulation; but critics merely found this, like the
arbitrary melismatic treatment of some words intended to give oriental
atmosphere. made the words incomprehensible, and few hearers or
musicians have defended the difficulty of comprehension as a spur to
greater attentiveness.
Among the techniques which relativise the reality of stage events and
work against uncontrolled empathy are Karl von Appen's sets. The back-
drops are of silky white, painted in Chinese style and having the primary
function of being beautiful and giving pleasure in their own right. 46 They
are frequently changed during the individual acts, particularly act 3.
Not weighted by battens. they swirl over the stage like flags as they
are droppedY For acts 2. 5 and 6 the town is painted- a mass of box-
like houses jumbled on top of one another, of central Asian inspiration.
In act 3 the delicate calligraphic style comes into its own for distant
mountains. gnarled trees and threatening percipices. In act 4 a broad
landscape suggests Simon's wanderings. in act 5 Azdak's perambula-
The Caucasian Chalk Circle 169
tions. At the end, when Azdak has invited those present to an open-air
dance, the procession out takes place in front of a drawing of a group
of musicians and a dancer with a tambourine.
What is placed before the backdrop should, according to Brecht, re-
mind one of the Christmas crib: overloaded, precious and naive. The
palace has a richly worked silver gate- in which the red fires of rebel-
lion can be reflected. 48 Another. less pretentious, gate represents the
church; the two stand side-by-side on stage, not spatially tied to the idea
of a building behind. A curving red carpet connects them. Props in act
2 include large. heavy. practical pieces of luggage: a wicker basket,
studded trunks and so on. In act 3 the turntable stage is much used.
Grusha runs against its turning. and sets for the various episodes come
to her on it. having been quickly built up during the previous episode
behind a drop screening the back third of the turntable. There is no real
break between episodes. Walking from one episode to the next, Grusha
sees the next building or landmark in front of her. The music supports
the idea of a continuum in which the tension is not allowed to drop-
a film-style chase sequence. 49 The peasant's hut is solid, heavy wood; at
the climax of the scene. the bridge is realistically rickety. with missing
floor laths and only one rope to hold on to. Act 4 is largely interiors:
solid furniture. a loom as high as Grusha. and after the marriage an out-
sized cask for Yussup's bath. When Simon returns, the river is shown by
two ground-rows of rushes running from backdrop to proscenium, a true
naive effect. In act 5. the court has a heavy practical gate and gallows.
in contrast to a light-framed, pointed construction which is the roomy
judgment-seat in which Azdak can recline as he is carried round the
assizes.
Karl von Appen took responsibility for costumes as well as for sets.
The women of the communes. even the agricultural expert, are in volumin-
ous shawls covering the head like a wimple and reaching over the upper
arms and back; the same folksy headdress is worn by married women in
the main plots. Among the men of 1944. if not in uniform. fur hats are
in favour; in the historical scenes there are steeple hats for those in
authority, spiked helmets for the soldiers. a high pudding-basin shape
for peasants and servants. The architects wear cloche hats crowned
with the emblem of a snail. architects being in von Appen's opinion slow-
moving creatures. 50 The Governor's wife has a cross between coronet and
tiara. crowned with peacock feathers. Grusha generally wears her own
hair. parted in the middle and formed into long plaits; the female singers
show a similar arrangement under their wimples.
The lords and ladies have masks. partly to complement their exagger-
ated costumes, partly because the actors are to be thought of as ama-
teurs who will take pleasure in dressing up. Their servants and soldiers
not involved in the action have partial masks, attaching them to the
170 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
ruling class, but incompletely (and facilitating doubling). The poorer
people could not have masks, as their costume was drab and inexpressive.
The double function of Simon, who as a soldier should inspire fear, but as
Grusha's lover must not, meant his having not the mask other Ironshirts
had, but a very masculine beard instead. Masks do not separate the good
from the bad: Grusha's sister-in-law did not have one. Rather, once
limited to the upper classes, they show the rulers' immutability. Whereas
the evil sister-in-law has changes of mood and rich expression, the Gov-
ernor is always bored, the Fat Prince always grinning, the nephew always
stupid. The Governor's wife has a half-mask, so that she can be seen
to smile at the Adjutant. 5 1
The Governor and his wife are in long, rich, light-coloured robes; the
architects, doctors, lawyers, have darker dress. The Ironshirts, of appar-
ently Samurai inspiration. have long, stiff, heavy tabards over long-
skirted coachman's cloaks. The Fat Prince- that Goering-figure- also has
quasi-Japanese armour, incongruously completed by a dainty fan. Ser-
vants, peasants and townspeople have more or less ragged clothes of
rough material: leggings, short overcoats and tied belts are typical of
the men, shapeless heavy jackets with skirts down to the ground and
aprons almost as long of the women, the whole in brown and beige,
occasionally a touch of red. The same clothes, in better material, better
preserved and with the addition of a cross at the neck, show the pros-
perity of Grusha's sister-in-law. The girl whom Azdak finds guilty of rape
has a skirt slit right up the front to show close-fitting ankle-length
drawers. Michael was represented at first by a doll, but after the winter
in the Northern Mountains a real boy appears.
8 Assessment
Practically all Brecht did is based on opposition: the split of Shen Teh
and Shui Ta is the most obvious example. It is useless to object to the
crassness of this duality, dismiss Brecht as simplistic, and go on to con-
clude that despite his errors he did quite well considering the era he had
to live through. 1 The shock-effect of the extreme is only part of his
uniqueness, and so is the tenacity with which he applies Marxian views
to the business of men's communal life. Each one of the plays we have
examined is influenced in its very structure by Marx's concepts of histori-
cal movement and of society. Another part of his impact is based on his
willingness to differentiate within the contradictions. Shui Ta is not all
bad. Grusha is not all good. Theoretical Marxism does not sit like an
incubus on the characters either, but is thoroughly modified by the
application of Chinese concepts of politeness, needed to complete the
image of people living in harmony as an ideal. The battle against oppres-
sion makes those who participate in it tense and even evil, but its aim,
never to be lost sight of, is goodness and relaxation. Art must (for, if
one does not believe in a religion, no other area of life can) represent
the aim too, however hard the struggle, and must exemplify the serenity
which in real life there is little chance for.
When we consider the interplay of exaggeration and nuance, of mass
constraints and individual dignity, of action and relaxation, of commit-
ment and distance, in Brecht, and when we ask what other playwrights
offer similar fruitful complexities, then we may come close to grasping
his greatness. Next we might look at the unmatched lyrical form in which
he can put his thoughts, for instance the words which the Singer in The
Caucasian Chalk Circle attributes to Michael and which make Grusha
pick him up. What use, Hanns Eisler asks, are distancing and Marx and
Lenin to a non-politician, until they fall into the hands of 'one of the
greatest poets of German literature'? 2 And Ronald Bryden some years ago
expressed discontent that, until the English are converted to learning
foreign languages, 'discussion of Brecht here seems doomed to centre on
what he said rather than how he said it; on Brecht the translatable
political didact rather than the greatest modem German poet.' 8 One can
be more sanguine: few of Brecht's effects rely on pure sound, and many
172 Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays
of the effects that rely on the riches of the German language and tradi-
tion can be approximated to by transposition into English; certainly the
translations of the four plays we have dealt with show very much more
than just politics in dialogue form.
If we then examine his plays as the writings of a man_ steeped in
theatre practice, embodying a new vision of a possible theatre experience,
we have the third element of Brecht's greatness before us. The epic
components of the plays serve to open up the stage for the presentation
of the dramatic action in the context of a wide historical development,
and most of all they aim at a unique interplay of appeal to the head and
appeal to the heart. In keeping with the general demand for serenity and
relaxation, the play on the stage is to allow the audience to keep cool
and laughing, not to put it into emotional tension which impairs posses-
sion of the faculties. Brecht-theatre should make us use our senses and
our sense to the full, not sweep us off our feet and make us passive. In
producing such effects, the collective of people who bring about the
theatrical experience exemplify the kind of human co-operation which is
Brecht's ethical ideal, and we are to be aware of this realised ideal at
work for our pleasure.
Theatre, freed by the rise of film and television from the constraint to
imitate reality. can develop as a means of commenting on reality in
many different ways. In this development Brecht's conception of theatre
must have a major role to play, since it uses to best advantage pre-
cisely the things about theatre which film cannot do or cannot do so
well, 4 mainly because in the theatre living actors supported by a range
of techniques of various kinds confront a living audience. The specifically
theatrical experience is Brecht's first aim, never propaganda; and his
theatrical imagination, his eye for stage movement, also adds an extra
note to his style as a playwright. He is not so much of a political activ-
ist, certainly not in the plays we have considered, as were Piscator's
writers before him or as is Peter Weiss after him. But the construction
of situations and dialogue with the stage in mind allows him to incorpor-
ate, without apparent effort, at least as much basic political content as
they can. without interfering with the gracefulness and humour he de-
mands of theatre.
As a Marxist, an intellectual. a proponent of reason in the theatre,
Brecht sometimes seems an outsider in an age whose drama seems to
have moved towards sensual and a-logical adventures, from Sartre's
Huis clos through Beckett, Ionesco and Pinter to the recent writers who
each seem to have developed some sensational neurosis to call their
own. As Martin Esslin has pointed out, the common core Brecht and his
great contemporaries have is the disorientation of personality, and for
this the contradictoriness of modern society is responsible. All these
dramatists show an alienated vision of the existent, or a vision of the
Assessment 173
existent as alienated. Brecht was fascinated enough by Beckett to work
on an adaptation of one of his plays. He is aware of the nightmare
aspects of our communal schizophrenia. But he does not trap himself
in an irrationality that would cut him off from giving any answers. For
him man is good. if not perfectible, and he is able to see his work, in
classical style, within a tradition of humane elements: Jesus, Luther,
Bacon, Goethe, Marx, Mo Tzu- none of them accepted uncritically, but
all pointing to the idea that it is worth while for men to attempt to
alter their fate.
Notes
Except in the case of the plays dealt with in detail in this book, the volume
number is quoted first, the page following after a comma •. thus: 15, 174. It is
difficult to date many of Brecht's texts, so I have dispensed with dates, but it
may be useful to the reader to know that a single, very approximately chrono-
logical sequence runs through volumes 8-10 (poems), another through volumes
15-16 (essays on theatre), another through volumes 18-19 (essays on literature
and art) and another through volume 20 (essays on politics); and that these
groups of volumes are (like volumes 1-7, plays) through-paginated. Thus:
Theoretical works and poems contained in the following editions are quoted
from them:
176 Notes
Bre(:ht on Theatre- The Development of an Aesthetic, ed. and trs. John
Willett, London (Methuen) 1964 (abbreviated B. on Theatre).
Bertolt Brecht: The Messingkauf Dialogues, trs. John Willett, London
(Methuen) 1965 (abbreviated M. Dial.).
Bertolt Brecht: Poems, ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim, London (Eyre
Methuen) 1976 (abbreviated B. Poems).
References to plays in English text are to the Methuen Modern Plays series,
London (Eyre Methuen):
The Life of Galileo, trs. Desmond I. Vesey, 1963, repr. 1974 (abbreviated G.).
Mother Courage and her Children, trs. Eric Bentley, 1962, repr, 1976.
The Good Person of Szechwan, trs. John Willett, 1965, repr. 1974.
The Caucasian Chalk Circle, trs. James and Tania Stern, with W. H. Auden,
1963, repr. 1975.
Quotations from these plays are supplied first with the page number in volumes
3, 4 or 5 of Gesammelte Werke (Galilei in vol. 3, Kreidekreis in vol. 5, the
others in vol. 4); then comes the page number in the Methuen edition; finally
(unless clear from the context) the number of the scene, for those not using
either of these editions. Alternative editions, some using other translations, are
published by Eyre Methuen, Blackie and Penguin in Great Britain; and Grove
Press, Random House and Pantheon Books in the U.S. Grove Press publish
individual editions of all four plays- Galileo in the second version with two
scenes cut.
The following important or useful books on Brecht, or by his friends, are re-
ferred to in text and footnotes by author's name only.
Four useful volumes of commentaries, notes and factual data are published in
the edition suhrkamp and edited by Werner Hecht: